


Bittersweet

by sugarpie10



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Gay Character, Dallon became Brendon's boss, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Lovers, Ex teacher Dallon, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Forgiveness, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Past Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie, Post-High School, Writer Dallon, based on a SEP novel, maybe a big songfic, some kind of Pride and prejudice stuff, third person singular
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-11-30 20:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11470665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarpie10/pseuds/sugarpie10
Summary: “...I came to Jacksontown twice, first to write a novel and to teach in my spare free time, and the second time more than ten years later to find a home…(...) And Mississippi loved writers. For the first time in my life I felt like I was accepted. I was perfectly, utterly happy...until my paradise was ruined by a young boy.(…) In the age of 17 he was the most handsome boy Jacksontown have ever seen. When they watched him taking his steps towards the school’s entrance, he was like the highly perfected sexuality in motion. (...) His dependants followed him everywhere like lapdogs, he wrapped everyone around his finger, and against the ones who he couldn’t, he did everything that a high school emperor had in his weaponry. (...)He got what he wanted and no one dared to oppose him. The high school’s monarch, teenagers’ feared god. He wasn’t really dangerous until he settled for insecure teenage boys’ blood, but after certain time he found himself an older pray. Me.”Extract from a novel by Dallon Weekes -The emperor’s new clothes





	1. “I know it breaks your heart, moved to the city in a broke-down car...”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one when Brendon is back.

There was a town in Mississippi state, called Jacksontown. The summer came early here every year, towards the end of April. At the castle-sized house’s yards the cherry-trees took their petals to pieces as pink rain, and the sun touched the teenagers uncovered shoulders with warm caress, as if the transitional spring, like that, wouldn’t have existed here.  
Except that day. Grey clouds towered at the peak of the poplar alleys and the rain was pouring making the Japanese cherries bald, and soaking through the flyers, the postman inserted in the mailboxes. The weather probably knew that the prodigal son returned to town and wanted to welcome him, the way he deserves it.  
Brendon Boyd Urie couldn’t have wished for a more warm-hearted welcome from his hometown. He looked over from the rain-washed windscreen to the Jack Russel Terrier next to him.  
“ Look at it Bogart! What a welcome! They ordered an april-storm just for us.”  
Bogart snarled, then propped his feet on the dashboard, and looked over the window curiously as Brendon passed by the Jacksontown board.  
“Thanks. I didn’t expect anything else from you” answered to the dog. “Would you take your paw off the drapery? No? That’s what I thought.”  
Bogart snarled again.  
“ You know mate, my precious good father” Brendon couldn’t have dropped the words more disdainfully, but his voice changed sharply to a pleasant, velvety tenor as he continued “.. and my mother reigned in this whole damn village, which could have been even mine. You would’ve looked better on a prince's side, in some soft basket, admit it.”  
Brendon almost heard the animal’s laughter in his imagination. He shook his head.  
He felt himself old and ancient just like the palaces he passed by. His dark brown hair, although the pompadour haircut, was not as thick, as it was at his age seventeen, and he changed his personalised suits, to a cheap fake-leather jacket. His rich lips rarely curled into a flirty, omniscient smile, and his chocolate-brown eyes didn’t blink hypocritically anymore, as they did in the past.  
Vainly, after one marriage and a dozen of lovers he burned out. His sweet laughing wrinkles and his snow-white smile unusually appeared on his face,  
and he felt himself more like thirty-something instead of twenty-nine. In the past he was the most well dressed boy in Jacksontown. Wore quality, fancy clothes, drove a Chevrolet Camaro and his hair was cut by the best hairdressers.  
He sold the Camaro six years ago and he bought an old Ford Escord instead. His clothes turned into cheap imitations, expect his old Converse. But this wasn’t a career since his sneakers had a hole on the sole, and every time he stopped to fill the tank the water flowed into it.  
He drove away on Nearly Road, towards the ominous building, which took half of the street.  
The Jacksontown High School could have worn his father's name, as a gratitude for the far-flung amounts, which Charles Urie -owner of the local prosperous brickyard - favoured the education with, and paid his “adored” son's position.  
What his father and his mother is for the city, that was Brendon for the high school's corridors. He used to walk between the walls of the building just like an emperor.  
He was the one who decided how popular somebody could be, who could sit at the best tables, and adjudicated the fact: who had the authority to smoke Marlboro Gold in the hour off, behind the school. Brendon owned the best parking place, he was the person who could judge who was allowed to date any member of the football team. We may say it, he ruled over the students boundlessly.  
No question asked, Brendon was not a benign dictator, but nobody dared to defy him. Somebody tried it once, but Brendon made sure, that he would never ever do it again. And what about Ashley Frangipane? How could there be a chance for that little, reserved, insecure girl, against Brendon Boyd Urie?  
It started to rain even more. While gazing at the high school, Brendon reached for the radio's button. He tuned up a channel, and an old Johnny Hates Jazz single started to play, and he felt like he flew back in time. It sounded bitterly nostalgic. The high school was the place where he last felt the world as his own.  
Bogart bit him in the arm in order to warn, he got bored of the waiting.  
“Are you crazy?” Brendon shouted, but the dog’s contemptuous look suggested, he doesn’t care about him either.  
Brendon turned right on the corner, leaving the last province of his governance behind, and he drove down on Downpour Road, where Ryan’s house stood ten years ago. Ryan Ross and he were best friends since primary school. More than friends, actually. They both knew that not only the friendly affection binded them together. They were curious and unexperienced in their tender age, but the society was narrow. Just like Charles Urie and Ryan’s parents. In their age of fifteen Brendon and Ryan was planning to start a rock band in the future together - from daddy's money of course -, and to live a free spirit lifestyle just like the hippies.  
Teenage love, which nobody may have known about, and Ryan probably forgot, defined Brendon’s additional conduct on the other hand. He didn’t blame Ryan. Teenagers tilt, but they find their way back to their own road usually. Or not. Otherwise, Brendon didn’t blame anybody for anything anymore. Except himself, because he never gave up on his adventures and casual affairs. He accepted that Ryan is vague, but Brendon noticed the endless potential on his own “vagueness”. They were sixteen when they first slept together, but they started discovering each other’s body years before. Brendon was the one who always calmed Ryan that what they had been doing is not a sin. Then he cheated on Ryan in the first year of University. With girls and boys as well.  
A bitter grimace showed up on Brendon’s face because of the memories. He still remembered the way Ashley Frangipane looked at Ryan when she thought nobody saw it. Towards the world Ryan and Brendon were the school's coolest kids, good friends, but Brendon didn’t endure anybody else near him. Especially not Ashley. Oh, not as if for a girl like she, there was a chance with Ryan.  
Ryan wasn’t only just the school band’s frontman, but he was an excellent student, and for sure, unsaid, but Brendon Urie’s property. Even if most people attributed this to a brotherly friendship.  
Brendon and his friends almost passed out from the bliss every time Ashley disgraced herself by her miserableness in front of Ryan, while Brendon rested his elbow on the other boy’s shoulder with a superior expression on his face. He was nauseated by the memory even better. He was sick of his past self.  
As he drove by the city centre he realized Jacksontown wasn’t the same town anymore. The fame - which was ensured with a bestseller called "Gospel for the fallen ones" did absolute good for the town as it took place right here. The plaza fountain went through restoration, fresh pansies winded around the stone promenade, and the local post office, and library resplended in a new, snow-white colour.  
Brendon still remembered, how many times they were hanging together behind the building with the guys while guzzling his father’s expensive quality whisky.  
He couldn’t postpone it longer, and Bogart scratched the Escort’s seat impatiently, so he drove towards Mona Lisa Lane and a house known as “Green Gentleman”. Although Green Gentleman didn’t own a historical past like the other residences in the neighbourhood, it stood out with its own beauty and pageantry. With the victorian style and the great garden, which was ruptured with rhododendrons and Cherry trees from the spying eyes, the house was like an enchanted castle on a hill. The garden’s white sculptures, like protective gargoyles were watching the passers-by with their marble eyes. This was the place where Brendon grew up.  
Brendon was surprised by the fact that the house went through a renovation, and a light was blinking from the upstair windows. He had been living locked away from the city's news for years. His only source was his aunt Brenda who sent him some letters but the woman wasn’t very talkative, so Brendon didn’t knew, who bought the palace of his childhood. But this wasn’t a problem. He had already enough people to hate with himself on the first place.  
Green Gentleman was one of the three houses at Mona Lisa Lane. Leaving behind the first, he took his direction to the second one, which aunt Brenda lived in until the day of her death.  
Bogart yapped excitedly. The dog was a little devil, but Brendon felt obliged to take care of him because Madeline loved him. Brendon once told her, Bogart has some kind of hyperactive personality disorder. "Just like you, darling!" Madaline laughed as a respond.  
From the memories Brendon finally smiled honestly. Madeline has changed him for the better, and she loved him as a son she never had. She forgave him, even if Brendon was unable to do so but at least she taught him how to accept the past and not to rebel against it.  
The rain was pouring unstoppably. If Brendon hadn’t known where to look, he would have passed by the carriage driver, which was surrounded by a tall hedge, the north border of Green Gentleman. The pebble had been washed out a long time ago, and the Ford's exhausted shock absorbers protested against the potholes. The building - what was used as a garage in the past - looked a bit more tumble-down than he remembered.  
The walls were half overgrown by amber, but with its white bricks and pale brown window-shutters, it still gave Brendon the impression of a gingerbread house.  
The garage was rebuilt in 1969 for Brenda, who lived her remaining life here. When she died, she left the carriage house to Brendon, making her despair obvious, since the matron never liked him.  
"I know you don’t want to be selfish and narcissist, Brendon. God bless your soul! I'm sure you'll grow out of it." Brenda was the type of old lady who thought she can insult him anytime she wants, as long as she adds “God bless your soul”.  
Brendon opened the car’s door, and Bogart ignoring his presence jumped through it, straight into the middle of a puddle, covering his owner’s ripped jeans with a good amount of mud.  
"You're such a sweetheart, really!" Brendon threw it to the dog. Bogart snarled while Brendon unpacked from the luggage compartment. They went to a cheap hypermarket to buy canned dog food, chips and coke that he thought would be enough for the week. While searching for his keys Brendon looked up to the golden panel which have been hanging next to the door for years:

“The american expressionist painter Esteban Wilson worked here in the summer of 1964.”

Brendon's heart started to beat fast.  
Esteban Wilson left a valuable piece of art for Brenda, and now it came into the legacy of his nephew Brendon Boyd Urie, who had to find it as soon as he could.  
When Brendon stepped into the house the mixed aroma of must, dust and old cognac greeted him, as if his aunt would still be there somewhere in the flat .  
For Bogart one single glance was enough, and he rushed back to the car almost upseting Brendon, who deep in his heart would have done the same thing, but he just put his packets down and looked around instead.  
In the living room, antiques were lined up over the fireplace, covered up with dust and spiderwebs just like the old furnitures’ clawed legs. Brendon remembered her aunt had somewhere a silver tableware what they had used only on christmas dinners.  
He hoped he will find it in the kitchen credence to sell it as soon as possible. Although, he didn’t have much hope to get a lot of money for it. He had to find Esteban’s painting.  
The rain didn’t ease out there, but Brendon didn’t want to lose too much time.  
He put his black baseball cap back on his head and ran down the small path leading to the atelier. His shoes were soaked, and Bogart didn’t spare him either. As they entered the rusty door, the dog shook him with water mixed with his drool, just in case.  
Brendon looked at him with a stubborn expression on his face.  
The room was exactly the same as Brendon remembered. When the garage was transferred into a spinster’s home, Brenda didn’t allow the carpenters to destroy this part of the building where Esteban Wilson had once furnished his studio. She was rather satisfied with a smaller living room and a narrower kitchen to keep it as a shrine.  
The shelves still had the rusty paint cans which Esteban had dipped his brush in many years ago to create his masterpieces. Since there weren’t proper lighting conditions the painter laid his canvases down the floor, and worked like that. On the workbench Brendon found a tool box, some brushes, knives, and spatulas. All of them laid on the desk as messy as if Esteban had left his job for just one cigarette.  
Brendon didn't expect his aunt to be so kind to let his inherit on display, but some kind of disappointment crept up his throat. Everything would have been much easier. Tomorrow morning his first job will be to start searching, to close the case as soon as possible.  
Bogart went back to the house with him. As Brendon switched on a the lamp, the despair that had been stabbing him for weeks had bitten him painfully. Ten years ago, he left Jacksontown as a self-conscious, foolish, angry boy, and he didn’t even think that the world doesn’t revolve around him. But the world was the last one to laugh, and Brendon was sure, the more he stays in town the more scorny giggles he gets. He could almost hear Brenda's voice in his ear while he looked over the dusty, heavy curtain “You should have been just a little better person, my dear son.”  
Over the hedge, he saw the chimneys of Green Gentleman. Brendon’s grandmother had designed it, his grandfather built it, his father renewed it for the first time, and Lilian, Brendon’s mother blessed it with herself, and promised him once the castle would be his.  
Years ago he would have cried or got drunk because of the injustices of life, but now he just released the curtain and turned around to feed his dog as if they were still at home in Houston.

***

Dallon Weekes stood next to the bedroom’s window at Green Gentleman. His tall, lean figure was just as high as the balcony door. His hair elegantly slipped back, and his face seemed a bit tired with the soft dark circles under his eyes.  
Even so, in a black robe - which he had wear over his simple, but expensive, white shirt and black suit pants - he looked liked an intellectual fashion model.  
He had deeply seated, steel-blue eyes, little boyish but yet serious features, and thin lips, what turned into a disbelieving, mocking smile, when he saw the light blinking at the garage next to the garden.

The black porcelain cup almost dissapeared in his large palm, while he tasted his strong dark coffee, which seemed to be sweetened by revenge.  
So, it’s true. Brendon Boyd Urie is back.  
More than ten years have passed since Dallon last saw him. He was also too young.. He was twenty-three years old when he moved to the southern small town to write his first novel and to teach high school students in his spare time.  
There was some satisfaction in the fact that he had been mellowed his anger so long. Like an excellent French wine, it became more and more bodily and intense, and he didn’t wanna waste it by drinking it fast.  
The sneer half smile didn’t disappear from his face. Ten years ago he was powerless against the young Urie. But not now.  
Dallon came from Utah to Jacksontown to teach at the local high school, although he was not enthusiastic about the job, and had never tried it before. Mississippi’s small towns had a shortage of teachers, and the board believed some kind of blood-refreshment wouldn’t hurt. The city committees contacted with Central American universities and offered positions as a teacher for the graduated students.  
Dallon adored most of the classic southern writers, so he took advantage of the opportunity. He couldn’t have found a better place to write his own great novel than the fertile literary Mississippi, which was the home of his role models.  
He quickly extracted a tolerable essay that greatly overstated his interest in teaching, collected a few glorious recommendations from his professors, then linked to his application the barely started novel’s first twenty pages. He expected that a state with such literary heritage would be impressed with it. He was right. One month later, Dallon was notified that they had accepted his application. Soon after, he was on his way to his dreams.  
He fell in love with the goddamn city on the first day. It was like a second home. The people living here were friendly and kind, and they kept a private sphere for him at the same time, which he was even more pleased with. Not like the teaching position, which was not easy for him at first, and later thanks to Brendon Urie became impossible.  
Dallon had no concrete plans for the revenge against Brendon, but that didn’t mean he intended to put aside his anger. Rather, he waited for the right moment, while testing his writer-fantasy.  
The phone rang, and Dallon stepped away from the window to pick it up. His talk was slow, with cynic tone and far more boyish than anybody could expected it. Perhaps, that was one reason, he could have denied a few years of his age.  
“Weekes”  
“Dallon ... I't’s Ashley here. I've called you a few times today…”  
The woman’s voice was a bit dispraising, but Dallon knew she didn’t get really angry since she knew he was working on his book.  
“I didn’t want you to wait that long, but I had so much work…” Dallon said, as he took the phone to the window and looked out. There was another light in the garage, this time upstairs.  
“Everyone is here and the others haven’t seen you in a long time. Why aren’t you coming over? We miss you, Prof!”  
Ashley liked to tease him by reminding Dallon of their early relationship when they were a teacher and a student. She and her husband were Dallon's best friends, and he liked the others too - he thaught every one of them - , but he had no particular mood to meet them now.  
“I still have to work. Maybe next time," Dallon said, but he didn’t take his eyes off the shadow in the garage. He wished he wouldn’t be the one who had to announce the news to Ashley.  
“Ashley ... There is light at Brenda’s old house.”  
Several minute of silence followed his announcement, then Ashley answered in a soft, almost colorless voice:  
“He’s back.”  
“It seems.” Dallon's voice had the exact same expectant overtone as Ashley's silence.  
They both knew this day would arrive, and now that it came, they didn’t know what was the stronger feeling, their expectation or the blunt pain that slammed into them like the phantom ache to a long healed wound.  
"Our time has come" Ashley said the last word, but Dallon couldn’t do anything but agree. Jacksontown is no longer Brendon Urie’s playground. He was just like Dallon in the past, when he attacked the most aching point of the young teacher.

***

Ashley had just returned to the kitchen in time to see Spencer's gloomy face when he put his cell phone down. The man’s gentle teddy bear features now seemed anxious.  
"You will not believe what happened..." Spencer said, but Ashley suspected she would. The friendly company in the kitchen was silent. The mood resembled to a long-awaited bad news being confirmed. The person prepared for it in the spirit, but when it comes it’s still a slap on the face, thanks for the hope which is a grim human property  
“It was Jake. You know, his relative, Megan, works at Quik Markt. You would never guess who paid at her a few hours ago.” Spencer continued.  
Ashley went to the dishwasher, trying to convince the others how uninterested she was about the situation. Her hands trembled only a bit.  
“Brendon is in town." Spencer's wife, Linda, panted a little. Ashley understood it, but get annoyed by her excessive drama at the same time.  
“This is impossible!” Linda added.  
"We knew he would come back." Kenneth Harris frowned.  
Kenny’s high voice was mixed with nervousness. Ten years ago he really looked up to Brendon. Maybe more than the others. “But who gave him the right?”  
"Brendon had always gave the right for himself" Linda reminded him.  
"I told you yesterday that I have a bad feeling..." Daniel Pawlovich loosened his tie  
as if invisible hands were strangling him.  
He joined Brendon’s team in the last year of the high school, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know what the news of his return meant to his friends.  
“Are you okay?” Linda asked tactfully when she joined to Ashley at the sink.  
“Yes." Ashley might have turned the sponge a little more violently at the mouth of the slim champagne glass than he should have done.  
“You should have been more gentle Spencer!”  
“No problem! We’re making such a thing out of it unnecessarily.” Ashley's voice sounded a little angry, but she didn’t want to show how hurt she got from the idea that for years Brendon had an impact on everyone. She tried to make her delicate, elegant features calm.  
“How long do you think he will stay?” Kenneth's asked with curiosity in his voice but his wife, Victoria, looked at him with disapproval.  
"Not for a long time I guess...." Spencer said while he sipped from his beer. “ Oh god, how much we hung out together…”  
There was silence over the kitchen. Linda broke it by saying what they all thought. “Except Ashley.”  
Ashley was never a member of their gang, but now she was the soul of their friendship.  
Brendon was at the age of twelve, when he had the idea of setting up a click.  
Or even an elite club, like in the teen comedy films, but so much more cooler.  
When they were little children, they consulted in a swinging chair under the drifting shadows of a maple tree in the backyard of Green Gentleman.  
They were a private club, the best band ever, from the most popular girls and guys in the school, and of course Brendon was the one who chose the members. As he generally did a good job, a team with a fantasy name "Testosterone Boys & Harlequin Girls" - they never called that in particular, considering its length - still existed many years later in the eye of the city.  
The leading athletes, cheerleaders, school-presidents, and self-proclaimed rock stars are adults now. They have become congressmen, managers, coaches, schoolmistresses and professional mothers, but their light has remained unbroken.  
In the glory days twelve members were counted, but there were those who moved away. The members who stayed in Jacksontown were all in Ashley's pastel, tastefully decorated kitchen and softly sipped their drinks, while immersing in their High School memories.  
They were Ashley’s best friends. Well, of course, Ryan, who has not come home yet.  
In the silence, everyone became the victim of their own thoughts. Ashley’s were bitter.  
In their youth, Brendon had everything Ashley ever dreamed of.  
Ashley had the reasons to compare herself to him.  
Brendon was handsome, popular, talented in anything, and he was aware of it. And there was Ryan Ross for him.  
Like Bonnie for Clyde, Starsky for Hutch, Watson for Sherlock, and she could have classified other iconic partners from movies and books, but neither of them was a perfect definition of what was between Ryan and Brendon. Although, Ashley only found out later, that her suspections were true.  
Ashley had only one single thing that Brendon envied. But it was a big deal and it was all that mattered. That was the only thing that gave Ashley power.  
"I wonder if Dallon knows, he’s back… " Dan wondered loudly. - “Did you called him, Ashley?”  
“Yeah, but he’s working…”  
"He’s always working" Spencer sighed. He missed the encouraging presence of Dallon. "Remember how we were afraid of him in high school?" The memory slightly solved the friend’s frustration.  
"Except Brendon." Kenny pointed out, and the tension begin to sharpen his invisible nails again like an evil dwarf under the children's bed. "And except Ashley, because she was the favorite of all the teachers." he continued when he realized that the conversation turned into the wrong direction again.  
"I was so in love with him," Linda laughed, and Spencer looked down at her sulkily” Don’t look at me like this! He was the ‘sexy-young-teacher’ And now he is so charming! Any man or woman recognizes this. Do not be jealous at all.”  
For sure Spencer wasn’t jealous. Dallon moved back to Jacksontown five years ago, and they were just getting used to the fact that the man who was their teacher before, now is the member of their gang. Just like the fact that he wasn’t interested in women at all.  
"We were all in love with him, except Ashley!" Victoria nodded.  
"Me too a little bit." Ashley said, but this was not entirely true.  
Dallon's moody and romantic standoffish self might have affected her, but she never fantasized of him like the other girls. Ryan was the only one who she cared about.  
Ryan Ross, the guy, who was in love with Brendon, even if it was a secret. “Dallon knows he's back. He saw the light at the carriageway.” Ashley said.  
“And what do you think Brendon’s gonna do? Will he walk in the city as if nothing had happened?" Kenny apparently couldn’t process the thought.  
"Personally, I won’t even speak to him," Dan said with conviction.  
"If you have the opportunity, you know that you will," Spencer added with painful objectivity. "We will all do because we’re dying of curiosity. How does he look like now?”  
Perfect like Satan himself, Ashley thought. She resisted the temptation to run to the mirror and confirm that she is no longer the weak Ashley Frangipane, she used to be.  
She would never compare herself to a man, because the idea itself is stupid. If that man wasn’t Brendon Urie. The only man who could touched Ryan as she did.  
Ashley was an acceptor, she was loyal and followed open-minded liberal ideas, but the green-eyed monster was fed by her innermost fears that she never said out loud.  
Brendon could give Ryan something she didn’t. This fact would confuse even the most understanding woman.  
She could have been the most beautiful woman in town, but she couldn’t compete with men. Especially not with Brendon.  
Her young self’s blue dyed hair was blonde now and she had a short bobcut by the hands of the best hairdressers. Her skin and her teeth were perfect, her body was athletic slim because of the tennis trainings. She dressed in an elegant stylish way, and her jewels were all expensive but not ridiculous.  
She didn’t look like her high school self at all, when he leaned in the corridor with his bowed head in big clothes, fearing that someone would speak to her. She kept herself well and looked more like her daughter's sister then a mother.  
Dallon, who was antisocial in some way too, understood her. He was kind to her from the beginning, not like to her classmates. With them Dallon was strict and sarcastic.  
The girls dreamed of him even so. They thought, Dallon looked like Greta Garbo and David Bowie's lovechild, and Ashley agreed.  
If anybody could call a man "classic beauty" Dallon's name would be written in the definition.  
The oven indicated with a rattle that the turkey was ready and Ryan finally appeared in the door. He put his briefcase on the counter, his brown suit lying on his shoulder with negligent elegance. He was a handsome man with gentle facial features, little boyish charm, and he had hazel eyes and a perfect pug nose that anyone could kill for.  
“Brendon is back! "Everyone looked at Kenny, who uttered the words as if he were defending himself for talking about it.  
The members of the company were too polite to watch Ryan's reaction, no matter how much they wanted it. Ryan didn’t say anything. He shook hands with the men, kissed the women on the cheek as if nothing had happened. The others followed him from the corner of their eyes while he took the corkscrew to open the wine Ashley gave to him. Ashley felt the old punch in her chest. They had been married for more than ten years. They had a beautiful daughter, a beautiful house, and an almost perfect life. Almost ... because Ashley could have done anything, she always felt that she was only the second in Ryan Ross' heart.


	2. "She paints her fingers with a close precision He starts to notice empty bottles of gin And takes a moment to assess the sins she’s paid for..."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one when Brendon step through the threshold of Green Gentleman.

After three days of living on coke and chips, Brendon couldn’t delay visiting the market. He waited until noon, hoping that the Big Star would be empty and drove to the city.  
He was lucky enough to buy what he needed without having to talk to anyone except of Patrick Stump in the pot, who was so surprised he hit the peanut butter to the checkout twice and just stuttered.  
In his way home, his eyes stuck on a sign at the local community building. The bitter feeling in his stomach appeared again. Perhaps now, facing with the black and white names, he was really back, and the pieces of his past could show up at any corner to make him nauseate.

"Ashley and Ryan Ross Concert Series  
7 May on Sunday 14.00  
$ 5 donations are local charity associations.”

It was getting late, and he turned to the lake, but realized he couldn’t waste the gas. He turned down on Downtown Road, not far from the Urie Brickyard, what was founded by his grandfather then his father, and now owned by Ashley and Ryan.  
It was hard to believe that they hosted a series of concerts. They have been married for more than ten years. Brendon shouldn’t have been frustrated, because he was the bad boy in their story. He was the one who hurt Ryan, not reverse. Ryan was too honest, and of course he was afraid that Brendon would use their relationship against him. For Brendon, with his typically bad judgment and extreme behavior, it was enough to offer a threesome, and he rushed to try even more things. Goodbye to old beautiful dreams, free love, rock band and friendship.   
Now Ashley was the driving force behind the revitalization of the city and she was a member of most civilian organizations, and the wife of a man whom Brendon can be thankful for realizing his bisexuality.

***

He drove down at Mona Lisa Lane with his battered Ford and he glanced at the French colonial building. The house, which once belonged to the city's most successful dentist, was now owned by Ryan and Ashley.

The last two days couldn’t have been more mournful. Brendon cleaned out the carriageway to make it habitable, but he didn’t find any evidence of Esteban Wilson's painting. And tomorrow he had to face the unpleasant task of exploring the ruined station building. Why didn’t Brenda leave her well-invested papers as inheritance for him instead of a junk garage-house and a train station which should have been taken down years ago?

The Mona Lisa Lane came to an end and Brendon pulled the break hard when the Escort lights illuminated something that was not there when he left. Thick chains were stretched across the bumpy driveway. He was away for only two hours. Someone worked fast. He jumped out of the car to watch it. The fast-setting concrete did its job, and not even multiple kicks did work against any of the piles that held the chain. The new owner of Green Gentleman is clearly unaware of the fact, that the driveway isn’t his property.  
Brendon’s mood got worse. He tried to convince himself to wait until the morning to wrangle with the house’s new owner. But he paid dearly to learn not to swipe his problems under the carpet, so he went to the long yard that led to the house where he grew up.  
He didn’t have palate for crossing the door of the house. In his imagination, Madeline was standing behind him, Brendon almost felt the warmth of his palms clutching his shoulders.  
"Keep your head up! Don’t slouch! "  
Brendon would have recognized the familiar pattern of bricks under his feet even with a blindfolded eye. He knew the point where the sidewalk sloped, he knew where he had to turn away to avoid the roots of an old storm-stricken oak.   
The once bright white limestone statues had become grey with time. Once upon a time they were defending Brendon from the enemy’s army during his games, but now they were just standing there and watching him with their lifeless scary eyes.  
He approached the porch. The stairs where he pressed his palm in the fresh concrete at his age seven had been plastered again, and only a tiny dimple showed that somebody cruelly abolished the mark of a child's territory.  
There was a light in the house. Brendon tried to explain it to himself that the strange feeling in his stomach was caused by the lack of hot food, but secretly he knew that wasn’t true.  
Before he left to the city, he slipped into his only regular black jeans and cleaned his Converse, which was still worn, but at least didn’t swim in the mud. Madeline surprised him with a burgundy sport coat for his birthday last year. The fact that he was wearing this instead of his seedy fake leather jacket, gave a bit sense of self-confidence for him.  
He tried to shape his hair with casual elegance, but the cheap hairspray had no effect on his clowlick so it slammed into his forehead.

In his nervousness, he started to spin his signet-ring on his finger. It wasn’t as beautiful as the white gold he had to put in pawn, but this one also had a letter "B" on it, just like his sixteenth birthday gift. Madeline would have gave him a rabbit-punch because he was chewing his mouth. “Don’t let them see you are afraid, son!”  
However, his mood didn’t improve. As he passed through the porch - just like he did on his way back home from parties or from the park when he was young - , he remembered what he had lost. He no longer lived here.  
"Everything will be fine!". The imaginary-Madeline still rested her hands on Brendon’s shoulder.   
He straightened up, he raised his chin and finally ringed the bell.   
The door opened. A man stood in front of Brendon. He was tall with a cynical and superior expression on his face.  
Almost more than twelve years have passed, but Brendon immediately recognized him before he even said a word.   
“Welcome, Brendon!”  
Brendon swallowed heavily, and his voice almost got stuck. He looked up to the other man the same way he did years ago, and now, for some reason, he felt himself seventeen again, while the figure in front of him was even more prestigious.  
Brendon wanted to turn around and run away, but he was sure that "imaginary Madeline" would kick his ass because of it. Then he himself too.  
“Mr. Weekes...” Brendon’s voice cracked.   
The other man’s thin, rigorous lips barely moved, when he answered.  
“That's true. Mr. Weekes.” His voice was towed, sharp and mocking.  
Brendon gasped. His aunt didn’t even mention that his ex-teacher was the person who bought Green Gentleman. Of course, she only told him about the things, she wanted him to know about, and she was obviously having a good time somewhere up there right now. Or down there, if Brendon thought of his family's behaviour.  
Time turned back. Twenty-three.   
His teacher’s age, when Brendon - almost as a child -, ruined his career.  
Those times, Dallon was very strange among them as a teacher. He was tall and sporty- thin, his hair was sleek on his forehead. He often wore bow tie and suspenders with white shirt or t-shirt. He looked like a student, but his mysterious thoughtfulness and his abstract attitude to life pointed him out in a completely different way.   
The girls were crazy for him, because he was so different. Dallon always frowned, talked in a skeptical, sarcastic tone, sometimes almost in a stiltedly way with polished pharshing.  
When he heard the boys calling him gay behind his back, he looked down on them and said he takes it as a compliment, because "so many great people in the world were homosexual”. Brendon was suspicious about him.  
A sober man wouldn’t have reacted to these rumors like that here. Except Brendon, of course, but nobody dared to poke him that way, because no one wanted their head pushed in the toilet. But the young teacher who lived in Brendon's memory was only a faint change of this great man who was standing in front of him.  
Dallon didn’t aged, his face’s features were still elegant and soft, but he became more muscular and Brendon became so much more concerned. The circles under his eyes seemed to be no longer a sign of tiredness, but rather highlighted his steel-blue glance. His hair was perfectly disheveled as if he had just woken up and run his fingers in it. Brendon guessed that this was a direct, neglectful elegance, and the best hair styling gels kept it shaggy and still perfect.The scent of Versace fragrance, money and intimidation swung around Dallon as a smoke cloud. He wore a white Armani shirt with grey Levis’ jeans. He built not only his body, but his style.   
Brendon was six inch shorter than him, so he had to look up to him.  
He glanced at the same haughty but a bit sad, cold-blue eyes he remembered. The old anger flared up again in Brendon’s chest.  
“ Nobody said you will be here.”  
“ Really? How interesting." the way Dallon spoke was almost bored and demeaning, and Brendon no longer needed Madeline's support, he wanted to punch him in the face right now. “Come on in! Feel yourself at home.”  
Brendon wanted to salute him with his middle finger and send him to hell. But among other things, he couldn’t afford the luxury of cursing as well as escaping.  
The contemptuous glance of Dallon's eyes told Brendon, he knew what kind of stinging pain his invitation causes. The fact that Dallon expected him to run away had given Brendon the determination to straighten his back and step through the threshold. Green Gentleman’s threshold.  
Dallon Weekes ruined it. Brendon saw it immediately. The round hall and the wide spiral staircase were still there, but her mother's cream colors and glossy black surfaces turned matt and brown on the walls, and the old oak wainscot became mahogany.  
In the place of the picture, which once dominated the room and portayed Brendon at the age of five, in her mother's lap, was now occupied by a vivid pink, orange and turquoise abstract painting with houses.   
In the middle of the room stood a beautiful black piano. Brendon always wanted to have a piano, but his father would not let him, because "he’s not going to listen to the thrumming from morning to night, and Brendon will also get bored of it soon”.   
For Dallon that wasn’t a problem, he brought a piano.  
"Well-well” said Brendon. He grinded his teeth instinctively and sniffled. He always did this when he was in disadvantage. “Everything wears the mark of your hand.”  
“Because the house is mine." He spoke so despicably as a noble gentleman who had to talk to a gardener. Brendon secretly knew he deserved to be hated, and he was angry in vain, he had to face the consequences anyway.   
It was about time. In his imagination Madeline nodded proudly.  
"I wrote an apology letter to you" he cleared his throat as he walked through the strangely familiar walls.  
“Wow.” Dallon couldn’t have been more uninterested.  
“It returned to sender”.  
“What a surprise.”  
Brendon knew he didn’t deserve anything else just deceptive words for his pathetic trying, but he decided he won’t be crawling for his ex-teacher’s forgiveness.  
“You know what?” With a seemingly lazy move he leaned on one of the shelves next to the door, with Dallon's disapproving glance, but he didn’t give damn about it. “Regret is regret. I know I didn’t try very hard, but better late than never.” Brendon said, as if every letter of his words were burning his tongue.  
“I couldn’t know. I try not to do things that I would regret later.”  
”Then listen to the one who is doing it. Sometimes, a simple "sorry" is the most a man could do, Mr Weekes. You know me.”  
From Dallon’s flashing eyes, he could have concluded that he knew him very well. Brendon swallowed his excuses and waited.  
"And sometimes even the most is not enough, am I right?" The cold answer came.  
Brendon would have lied if he said he was surprised that Dallon couldn’t forgive him. Indeed, his apology didn’t sound really honest either, as he stood there in the hall of his childhood palace, like a delivery boy waiting for a gratuity. But since Dallon deserved a real "regret" Brendon wanted to try again. But not here, not now, with uncleared balance of forces.  
Dallon's posture reflected the perfect peculiarity of a man in command. His hands were resting negligent in his pocket, he flung up his chin, his jaw clenched from anger. He was in his mid-thirties, but he seemed younger.   
When they were teacher and student, the six years between them seemed an invincible gap, but now it was insignificant.   
Brendon remembered how much Linda and Victoria had gushed about him, and how Ryan looked curiously when they were talking about it. Brendon, however, refused to like someone who wasn’t available for his flamboyant, flirty, brash comments.

He wanted to apologise again, and do it well this time, but Dallon’s mocking and the way he ruined his home stood in his way. Brendon’s old nature raised his head again, and all the internal warnings in vain, the words just came out.  
“It may have been even a favor to you. You couldn’t have bought this place from your teacher-salary.”  
“I forgot to say thank you.” Dallon's words fell on Brendon’s eardrums like ice, but he tried not to show the guilt that he felt now, with an adult head, after all the things he went through.  
“..Cause these words are knives that often leave scars.”- Brendon quoted from Dallon’s novel. “Anyway, congratulations for your book. " He sighed dramatically.  
“ You read the “Gospel for the fallen ones?” Dallon raised his elegant eyebrow, what made Brendon angrier. Even this one tiny gesture was full of hate.  
“ I tried, I swear! But those big words...! It's a miracle that I remembered this line.   
Maybe it's because I accidentally snorted out my coffee on that page and tried to clean the patch.” Brendon could not restrain himself.  
“It's not surprising. You never wanted your brain to face bigger challenges, than the things you found in a porn magazine.”  
Brendon almost whistled in recognition. The old Dallon Weekes would have slammed the teacher's resting room’s door on him as a respond, then he would have punished him with inscriptions for everything he could pick. But this answer was surprising.  
"If no one read them, everyone would have sex in missionary pose with discreet sighs, then they add a rigid comment like ‘I’m gonna ejaculate’ in the end. You know ... I’m sure you read english erotic literature. Oops…! Now you will descipline me for my rough comment.”  
Dallon's sense of humor didn’t improve much over the years, but Brendon managed to catch the tiny snare of his jaw that was caused by his words. That was more than nothing, but as fast as it came, it disappeared just as quickly. His former teacher answered with contemptuous objectivity.  
“The punishment never worked with you, Brendon. Your mother didn’t teach you to take the consequences for your actions.”  
“My mother undoubtedly had an opinion on what is good for me and what is not.” Brendon raised his head but just that much that he could comb his feather with his fingers from his forehead, and to show up his ring as some odd proof that he was still Brendon Boyd Urie.  
“Do you know, that she forbade me to act? But I wanted it so bad! But, in her opinion, a face and a mentality like mine calls for more than just parading in the theater. I was so furious because back then I was in the mood for the acting-thing, but you know what she was like when she had something in her head.”  
“Yes, I know." Dallon almost didn’t blink, and Brendon was the one who broke their gazing-game with a soft, bitter laughter.  
Of course he knew it. It was Lilian who got Dallon kicked out. It was time to stop the crap and attempt to reparate what he should have done a long time ago.  
“I'm sorry. Really. It's unforgivable what I did. I know it was a villainous low blow." It was difficult to look into Dallon’s eyes, but Brendon didn’t took the flight. "We both know I had no choice.” But the way they looked at each other suggested Brendon's conscience, they both knew he had.  
“And there were so many rumors there!” Brendon spread his arm as if it had been an embarrassing joke, but his grotesque humor found deaf ears even on himself. ”Listen!” he changed to a more serious tone. "I told my mother I lied, but the trouble had happened already, and you left the city before I could do anything!”  
“ How weird. I don’t remember that your dear good mother would have looked after me. I thought she was a smart woman, but it’s strange that she never found a way to call me and apologise for...What did she said? ’I have defamed my authority and endangered the spiritual peace and physical integrity and moral well-being of his innocent little boy?"  
From the way Dallon uttered the last three words, Brendon could hear that he knew what he did with Ryan at the Camaro's back seat.  
Brendon didn’t know what to answer.   
“Mr Weekes, it was not easy for me to admit to my father what I did…” He swallowed heavily.  
But Charles found out a few month after Lilian’s death when he packed her papers and found the letter with Brendon's confession. “ But he treated you fairly. He practically published an ad in the newspaper telling that I was lying.”  
“Almost a year had passed. It was a little late, wasn’t it? By then I had to go back to Utah to my family. They're religious, you know. They loved the story.” Yes, that was the detail which Brendon was not aware of, and when he found out, he tried to do everything to fix it. Everything, what a seventeen-year-old, selfish, confused boy could do.  
Just to overshadow the severity of the situation, he wanted to point at the fact that Dallon was obviously now free of the religious fanatics, but that would sound like a pathetic kind of apology.  
Dallon stepped out of the door and went to the bar. Brendon's mother would scream if she saw there is a bar in her living room. Brendon’s mouth only dried out.  
“Wanna drink something? "Dallon offered him as a good host, but at the same time he started a cat-mouse fight.  
“I don’t drink anymore.”  
“Are you a good boy now?”  
“No. I just don’t drink.” Brendon was struggling. According to his heart, he would have drunk the whole expensive bottle of Gin with two Xanaxes, and he would have laid on the bed hoping that Bogart would eat him. But Brendon didn’t do this. He hadn’t got drunk in two years, and he wouldn’t want to return to his bad habit, when he should stand the mud and prove to himself that he was no longer the man he used to be, even though Dallon Weekes’s every word said the opposite.   
Dallon touched his lips with the glass what was almost lost between his fingers. Brendon almost forgot how big palm he has.  
"So, you divorced, and then you became Arthur Cohen filmproducer’s lover?" Dallon played with his long fingers, and Brendon couldn’t take off his eyes of them. “And then, an old widow actress came. It's really unusual, even from you.” In Brendon’s imagination Madeline softly grabbed his shoulder again and warned him not to be Bogart and bite the man's foot because of the comment.  
“One thing will never change in Jacksontown. The rumours.” - Brendon said and straightened his burgundy jacket. "I would appreciate it if you removed that chain from my driveway.”  
Dallon slipped into one of the leather armchairs, without offering the other one for him.  
“You have no luck in life. Father or mother complex? I heard only your exwife was at the same age as you.”  
“What kind of insights. I wouldn’t compare Sarah to Arthur and I don’t even understand what Madeline has to do with all of these, considering that the situation is completely different.”  
Brendon's nostrips thrilled, and Dallon acknowledged with a satisfied smile, that he was able to made his blood boil.  
“Sarah was your wife right? From the university?”  
“How informed.”  
“There was a nice newspaper article about it. The only daughter of a tycoon. All this after your mother died and your father tried to keep his son away from himself.”  
Brendon glanced impatiently at his imaginary watch, only for as signpost, but Dallon was still watching him curiously.  
"I tried to be a decent son and prove that I wasn’t totally depraved, so I married her. Good people do this.” Brendon smiled sourly, and saw the shadows of the past slid over the other man’s face.  
They aroused Brendon’s interest, but he knew that he would find deaf ears on any questions, because they were currently eating his own self-esteem with golden dinnerware set. "But, as you know, it didn’t take long. Two years didn’t pass and we divorced.”  
“You got bored of her?”  
“No. I loved her. Really. Sarah is an angel. I’m just...I wasn’t a good husband. Harold Van de Kamp also had his diploma instead of fluctuations. If you know what I mean…”  
“I might believe you regretted the fact that you couldn’t stay in your pants.” Dallon added sarcastically.  
“I learned from it. I didn’t cheat on Arthur. He did, moreover, he was kind to inform me every single time that our relationship was nothing just fun.”  
Dallon's eyebrows ran to the center of his forehead and sipped his drink.  
“Awesome! I also heard that he had dumped the rest of your money after you became disinherited.”  
“But he coundn’t take my pride!” Brendon imitated sobbing dramatically, then he sent a thousand watt smile to Dallon.  
It was no longer the honest, playful smile as before, but it still made Brendon’s finely-shaven face more beautiful, with the way his curves framed his mouth and his eyes narrowed to a tiny, adorable slit. The glass stopped halfway towards Dallon's mouth. “ It's been a long time ago, I'm over it.” Brendon rolled his eyes.  
"Now I understand why you wanted to be an actor. Obviously, that was why you were friends with Madeline Waldorf. You got a part in a movie, am I right? Which didn’t work out. Although I know it was about something anti-drug smuggling. Hippocratically, afterwards, how many times you and your friends smoked weed behind the school.”  
“Innacuracy, Sir. I tought they were just cigarettes with some special flavour. Silly youth.”  
Dallon didn’t smile, but Brendon didn’t expect anything from a man whose face had been carved out of diamond. “Do you want some other information to write my biography book?” He took an investigative look at his former teacher, maybe a little bit longer glance at his crossed tights.  
"Then they lost sight of you for a while," Dallon replied. "All we knew is that you were living with Madeline.”  
“I lived in her house. As a renter. It’s not the same.”  
Brendon's voice was honestly strict and Dallon pulled his mouth to a superior, mocking smirk. Brendon wondered how his sincere smile could look like. He couldn’t imagine.  
“ Do you think that I believe that you were just "good company" for each other and nothing else?"  
"We played stunning poker bets." Brendon looked at his nails with fake interest.  
“I don’t doubt it.”  
“Yes you do.”  
"Don’t tell me I didn’t give you the chance to wash your name clear." Dallon stood up and leaned against the bar, but he didn’t take his eyes off Brendon, who laughed bitterly.  
“Can I get some pure acetone?”  
Brendon resigned to the inevitable things he had done in the past. Madeline taught him to accept what he can’t change.

 

He worked at a Los Angeles restaurant for the first time, but he was kicked out because he answered back to a guest in a wrong way. Then he became a barmixer in a night club. When he lost that job too, he served lasagna in a cheap Italian restaurant at Venice Beach. At least he crossed into a pub in one of the alleys behind Hollywood Boulvard.   
He met many interesting people there, and he worked hard night to day, so he didn’t have time to the overthinking.  
One evening, however, he became distressed. He noticed that he was just sitting there, and he almost started to cry because Sarah and his new husband on the front page of a magazine. This was the time when he realized he have to grow up and take responsibility for his actions.   
Every Sunday there was a woman in the pub. She was in the middle of her sixties and she asked for the same thing: Brandy with two cocktail cherries.  
She was silently reading at the corner, and every time Brendon served her drink, she was always so nice to him. She was Madeline Waldorf, a long-forgotten, respectable actress who lost everything after her husband died. The man only left a debt to her, and she didn’t see the way out of it, but she accepted her “fate”.She said, she did a lot of things in her younger age why she deserved this reward. Brendon felt a lot like her. They talked more and more, and Brendon often escorted her to home. When Brendon couldn’t afford to pay for the little room he had rented, Madeline offered him to move to her, as the house was big enough. The rumors started here but Brendon didn’t care about them. He felt comfortable with Madeline and helped her anything she had just asked. He did the shopping, he drove her to the clubhouse, he walked Bogart, and he disparaged all the fashionable actresses whom the woman didn’t like.  
Whatever strange it was, they became best friends with the old matron. She replaced Brendon’s lost mother, and he was Madeline's never-born son. With her advices, positivy and her great sense of humor, she always made Brendon feel better and helped him to grow up.   
Anger and despair were mixed up in Brendon’s dear memories, as he remembered what the woman had been keeping from him.  
"If I heard correctly, Mrs. Waldorf had to go to the hospital. The last new at least was that you moved to Houston” Dallon raised his glass as a bored but very manly Gucci model. “I feel so sorry.”  
Brendon's throat sqeezed and it made the brilliant response harder, but he was able to spell out something before returning to hopelessness.  
“I appreciate your sympathy, but if you are reliant on an elderly person, you have to prepare for everything.” Brendon weren’t. He was so angry when he found the hospital statement.   
It seemed, Dallon still thought he wanted Madeline's money. Brendon watched how the other man stepped back and crossed his legs again, making a seductive combination of femininity and manpower.  
“Did you know that all the girls were crazy for you at high school? " Brendon put the conversation on another subject, because of the fear in his throat again.  
“Of course.”  
"Some of the boys, too." He couldn’t even shut his mouth, but he thought that after he unfolded his private life, it was well deserved.   
Although it was not really practical, If he wanted Dallon’s forgiveness.  
Brendon wondered if Dallon was married. Probably not, and Jacksontown's women were standing in front of the door with their coconut biscuits. In vain? He couldn’t decide the old rumours were lies or secrets, orhow much was his lie unfair. In every single way of course but still... "I knew then that your accusation was only an endlessly insecure, crippled boy's rebelling against his own self-awareness, Brendon.”  
“I'm bursting out in tears within moments.” Perhaps he had more sarcasm in his voice than he wanted, but Dallon’s face also showed that what he said was just a teasing not an understanding.  
“I wouldn’t betray you. At least I wouldn't have said to your parents the facts which I had nothing to do with." Dallon’s voice now was honest, and Brendon couldn’t look him in the eyes again. “But now, the situation is different. We play with open cards, and you've found a very aching point, when you throw the first punch.”  
Brendon tried to seem self-conscious.  
"I'm sure you had a great time when you closed my driveway, but I can’t laugh with you. It's such a petty revenge. You can do better than that.”  
“Oh, misunderstood! It wasn’t a revenge, I just enjoyed it.”  
Dallon didn’t look like he knew how to enjoy anything, but Brendon had bitten his tongue before slipping this out of his mouth. Even though he felt he have to wait forever for his former teacher’s forgiveness.  
As Brendon looked at Dallon’s well-dressed outfit, he wondered who had made the piles, who had done the dirty work so fast. He could have good connections.  
“Don’t you think it would be uncomfortable if I call the police?”  
“Not at all. It's my plot.”  
“The carriage was my aunt’s!”  
“The house is. But not the car driveway. It still belongs to Green Gentleman.”  
“This isn’t true!” Brendon snapped with candid surprise.  
"I have an excellent lawyer. He is taking great care of the property limits. I will send a copy of the blueprints for you.”  
Could his dad be this stupid? Why not. Charles Urie was conscientious when it came to the Brickyard or the city, but he was negligent about his family and their home. What could Brendon expect from a man, who had a lover in the same city where his wife lived?  
Brendon was tired. He had to face with too many memories this day, and he didn’t want anything else, just sleep.   
Even the ranky growl of Bogart was better, than torturing himself in this goddamn house.  
“Okay. What do you want, Mr. Weekes?” Obviously not just my apologies, so spit it out!”  
“Retaliation,of course. What did you think?”  
The cruelly gentle words gave sy the shivers to Brendon. He resisted the temptation to have a desperate look after the Gin that Dallon had just put down.   
“Where do you want me to park?” He sighed.  
“I don’t care about it at all. Maybe an old friend of yours will help.”  
The moment came for Brendon to get angry, but he forgot how to do it. With his hands folded in his pocket, as much as his dignity allowed him, he backed himself out to go to Dallon. He bent down and got all his hopes up that at least he can confound him, leaning down to the armchair face to face. Dallon looked cold.  
“ You don’t think clearly now, you see. I've lost a couple of loves, two parents, my life, so if you really want to punish me, you'll have to dig deeper than a lousy driveway!” Brendon hissed into the other man’s face.  
“Are we feeling sorry for ourselves?” Dallon's half-smile seemed to be more frightening and desirable from near, and Brendon felt like something flattered in his stomach.   
But Dallon was right. He sounded exactly just like a self-pitying person, and he wanted to bite his tongue, but he just folded the cuff of his jacket and walked to the door.  
“Fuck you Mr.Weekes! And fuck your sorry too!” He put a little bit more strength to the words than he needed, but he didn’t care about it. He just wanted to go.  
He barely made three steps when soft perfume scent scratched his nose. His heart jumped into his throat as Dallon took his arm and turned him towards him. Not gently, not violently, but Brendon almost choked from the unexpected gesture.  
“And what do you think about this kind of punishment?” The cold expression of his former teacher reminded Brendon to Arthur when he buffed him during a fight.  
But Dallon had an another kind of violence in his head.  
Before Brendon could have said anything he bend his head down and bruised his mouth with a brutally coarse, hard kiss. Dallon’s fingers were in his hair and held his head so strong, that Brendon had to stood on his tiptoes, if he didn’t want to fall to the door.  
How many kisses existed? The small cheek-kisses of his loving mother. Aunt Brenda dry lip touches. Passionate teen snogging with Ryan. The aroma of the hope in Sarah's lips. Then there were kisses of men and women to whom Brendon could hardly remember, except that each one had a taste of despair. The last kiss he got was from Madeline at Houston. Fear, promises, and pride clung to his face with her lipstick mark.   
"I'm so proud of you, Brendon. I couldn’t have wanted a better child. "  
"Don’t say that. Everything will be fine! This is not the end. " Brendon heard their words in the hospital in his mind, but the shock made them out in a flash. Dallon kissed him. How many kisses, but Brendon didn’t remembered any of them which could be like that. Cold. Captivating. Cruel. Intense. It made him feel desperate.  
Dallon slowed down. He held Brendon's chin in his palm, forced him to open his lips, just enough to lick his tongue.   
Brendon didn’t have a strength to kiss back. He didn’t do anything, and he wasn’t surprised when he was pressed against the wall and their croch touched.  
He almost waited for it. He knew that Dallon would do it after the kiss and as a toy he let him do it. However, he didn’t expect the desire he felt when his fingers slid into his hair. Bone-craving desire for love what was a strange wish from a man who shared emotions in a carefully narrow manner.  
Dallon finally stepped back, and Brendon felt the taste of the Gin in his mouth. He hoped he was just getting dizzy because of that.  
“If I remember correctly, that was what you said.That I accused you with things, then I pressed you against the wall and kissed you when you tried to deny them.”  
The steel blue eyes dangled in his gaze. Brendon couldn’t breathe.  
“That was the lie you told your mother, am I right Brendon? The lie which you tried to save yourself with and sent me back to Utah.”  
Dallon’s words were hacking Brendon with the burning whip of recognition. The rumors were true and he took the opportunity from Dallon to came out to the people when he was ready. He was right. He hit him where it ached the most.  
“Yes…” Brendon’s lips trembled as he pressed the answer, and Dallon slid his thumb over his lower lip.  
In an another situation it could have been a sign of tenderness, but now it wasn’t. Not in their case. It was a tool, to make Brendon weak.   
He owed him with regret, but now he was left with only a little bit of dignity and he would rather die than drop a single tear. Dallon lowered his arm.  
"It is no longer a lie, and now you know what it meant for me.”  
Brendon gathered up his remaining power, which almost left him and managed to sharpen himself to lift his hand and touch Dallon's face.  
There was a light in his eyes again, just like when he was seventeen and he didn’t know how he had succeeded, but his pleasantly masculine tone changed to a degree more mutilated. Maybe the shock or just his imagination played with him.  
"I was disgusted for all my life, that I had to live in a lie. Thank you for washing off the sins of my skin, Mr. Weekes.”  
Dallon felt the cool fingers on his cheeks and realized that Bendon got the last word. He felt shocked instead of glory. Both of them knew he had to feel glorious, but Brendon tried to deprive him from it.   
Dallon looked down to the mouth he was torturing minutes ago. Brendon didn’t have the taste like he had expected - not that he had expected anything, as he had not planned the attack, but still. Unconsciously he calculated with cunning, pettiness and huge egoism as Brendon's essence. He waited for Brendon to laugh maliciously into the kiss, or he waited him to say “I knew I’m irresistible” or something like that. Or maybe some kind of cheap bargain, so then Dallon could have push him from himself.   
But he experienced something else - some kind of hardness, sturdiness, with a little bit of sass. At least the last one seemed familiar.  
Brendon was pointing at Dallon’s chest as if he wanted to shoot straight to his self-esteem with a gun. For a fleeting moment, his famous smile washed across his face and he winked.  
“See you, Mr. Weekes. It was fun to chat with you.” Then he closed the door behind himself, but his scent of spicy sex and cussedness was still there, and Dallon stared silently afterwards.  
It should have ended with the rough kiss, but only the old wounds broke.  
At his age of seventeen, Brendon was the most attractive boy Jacksontown had ever seen. As they watched him walking to the high school's entrance, he was like the artistic perfection of sexuality in motion.  
It was in his eyes, in his lips, in his hair, in his smile. All the girls crushed to the wall as they watched him and they were weeping for nights because Brendon didn’t want to date them. All the boys would have given everything for half as much prestige as he had. All the love songs and sinful thoughts seemed to be written about him. Dallon wasn’t blind either, but for him he was only a child at that time.   
He also realized how was Brendon looking at Ryan. A single glance was enough to Dallon to be clear with the thing which no one knew. Maybe this was what frightened Brendon. Dallon didn’t know. But now he didn’t have to care about it anyway.  
Brendon was still beautiful. But his freshness disappeared. He was tougher and more mature, even though he wasn’t higher than 5,8’ , just like he was at high school.  
The sexuality was pouring out of him as well. Perhaps the rose withered, but the thorns remained, and they seemed even more dangerous now.  
Dallon took his drink and sat in the armchair.  
As he looked around at the luxury home he had bought for his money, he remembered the scorn of his deeply religious father when he was forced to return to Utah. Right after being kicked out of his teaching position and the revealing of his feared secret even if he didn’t do anything wrong.  
“You brought me shame! And we will look for a decent wife for you and you will live in a normal family like all of us! "   
Dallon couldn’t forgive this. Brendon lived his life as the way he wanted, and his reputation was the price of it.   
Despite the retaliatory kiss Brendon still had the upper hand. Dallon wanted to show him how feebly it feels to stand laid bare in front of everyone and couldn’t do anything. Even the quality Gin couldn’t remove the memory of the defiance look of the coffee brown eyes. Dallon bit his own lips, but it still had the taste of Brendon.


	3. “I wanna be praised from a new perspective, but leaving now would be a good idea, so catch me up on getting out of here..."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one with the two heritages

Brendon had the rest of the potato chips for breakfast, and he glanced at Bogart, who slinked into the kitchen with a hostile look on his face. He didn’t like the cheap dog-food he got again. In spite of all the material vicissitudes, Madeline always gave the best for her dog.  
“Oh, God, don’t be so choosy! Any other dog would like to have this ... this... What is this? ‘Dog pudding with chicken’ stuff! Or you can go to the trashcan for something else, if you would like that better!”  
Bogart was trying to make some kind of psychotic Christopher Walken-expression, but his floppy ears were more adorable than dangerous.  
Madeline always said that the dog's nature is very similar to Brendon’s. But neither of them agreed with this fact.  
“Can I help you with the eating?” Bogart turned his back to him. He seemed very offended. “Come on, you scamp!” Brendon stood up from the table, and opened the door. Bogart tried to bump him, but his owner knew his tricks and stepped away, then they walked out into the balmy, misty april morning. While Bogart sniffed around, Brendon glanced at Green Gentleman. He tried not to think about the meeting with Dallon Weekes.  
At least he didn't collapse until he reached the carrigeway. The old guilt clung on him like spiderweb. He should have tried harder to approve what he did, but he didn’t seem to grow as much as he thought.  
Why did Dallon have to buy Green Gentleman? If he ever told the press that he had returned to Jacksontown, Brendon had missed the news.  
But it seemed his former teacher is popular, even though he didn’t give much interviews.  
Even the photo on the book cover was old and grainy. All in all, Brendon thought he should had been more prepared to meet Dallon, although it was more shocking than he could except.  
He went to the rhododendrons, which were the boundaries of their territory and he pulled back the lower branches.  
“Be a good boy Bogart! Let me be proud of you!” The dog didn’t contradict this time.  
He sniffed for a few minutes, then found a suitable place in the middle of the lawn and did his job.  
“Good dog!” Brendon suddenly noticed that Bogart was toddling to the house as if he wasn’t scared of its luxury. “No! You are not! Come back! Bogart!!”  
Of course the dog didn’t care about him.  
“I’m serious! I have to go to the downtown and if you don’t come back, I'll leave you here!” Brendon wasn’t sure, but it seemed like Bogart turned him down. The dog comfortably continued his way.  
“All right! Do me a favor and don’t come home!”  
Unlike the natural habits, Bogart didn’t like to straggle. He found too much pleasure in Brendon's attempts to become his good owner. Brendon turned back to the flat. What kind of person can be hated by his own dog?  
He took his keys and his jacket, he picked up the baseball cap to hide him a little, then he went searching for the painting at the station building.  
He found a penalty bill from the police under his windshield wiper because he parked at a place he wasn’t allowed to. Incredible. In his imagination, he pressed it down on Dallon's throat, but he realized that he could do it on his own throat too, if he doesn't get some money as soon as possible. Supposedly, the cellulose content of the paper fills the stomach of a man. He slipped the bill into the awning and drove into downtown.  
He and his mother walked here a lot in the past. They were so much alike, and always had a good time. In Brendon, the lust for his loving, imperfect mother was so fierce that it was hurtful. Madeline replaced Lilian while Brendon was with her, but now he felt himself sad. But for his father, he only had bitter feelings.  
"Please say, that he isn’t my real father! Did someone else get you pregnant, and then you two just got married?"  
“Watch over your mouth, Brendon! The fact that your dad is a rotten person doesn’t mean that I am too. I never want to hear anything like that from you again!"  
Brendon could imagine a charming tycoon with the style of Marlon Brando for her mother. But Brendon's huge, almost black eyes perfectly matched his father’s, so it made it impossible for him to believe his fantasy of Lilian’s secret lover. He suspected that his parents' marriage was inevitable, but they couldn’t have been more incompatible.  
Lilian, was the exceptionally beautiful, lively daughter of a local merchant. She was just like Scarlett O’Hara. Charles was the heir of the Urie Brickyard. The average, discreet, sparklingly intelligent man was impressed by Jacksontown's ball queen, while Lilian secretly despised the boy.  
At the same time, she craved for everything what this marriage could gave to her.  
Charles had to know that Lilian wasn’t able to worship him as he wanted, but he married her, then punished her by openly living with another woman.  
Brendon's mother’s revenge was that she didn’t care about Sabrina Farangipane. Finally Charles raised the bet by turning his back on the one Lilian loved the most. Their only son. Cruel intentions at a small southern town, like a bad soap opera. No wonder why Dallon became popular with “Gospel for the fallen ones”.  
Despite the mutual hate of his parents, neither one of them ever had the courage to divorce. Charles was the economic and political leader of the city, Lilian was the same for the social life. None of them wanted to give up what the other had given to them. Their devastating marriage continued and they dragged their confused kid with themselves.  
Brendon turned to Downtown. Every house, every corner and pavement recalled his childhood memories. The years of his rebellion and his awakening self-consciousness. He arrived at the station building, and parked. As he watched the bad-conditioned, red-brick building, he saw the place where Dallon Weekes was standing on the obscure picture on the book cover. The wind blew off some of the pans from the roof, the windows were batten down, and an old graffiti cheered at the entrance. The ragged rails were weedy and some cans and broken bottles were lying across them.  
It was deserted, but Brendon bursted out laughing with bitterness because this place was the best symbol of his life. Why did Brenda think that it is important to keep this old shambles?  
His aunt was obsessed with the local history, just like Brendon's father, and they obviously wouldn’t have thought it wise to destroy the station.  
As he got out of the car, he thought of the letter, which was crumpled in the bottom of his package. Brendon didn’t like his second name, apparently Brenda was so kind that she called him by that.

"Dear Boyd!  
I leave the carriageway, the station building and, of course, the painting to you because you are my only living relative, and despite your behavior, blood is thicker than water.

The station building is a ruin, but after I bought it, I didn’t have any energy and money for the renovation. I'm sure you would like to sell it, but I doubt you'll find a costumer. Even the Social Development Society doesn’t respect history enough. So...I don’t know...it is yours to look at.  
The carriageway is a registered historical place. You have to keep Esteban’s studio in its current state. If you don’t, everything goes to the University.  
And the painting ...You will find it. Or not.  
Warm embrace:  
Brenda Evangeline Urie  
Ps.: Your mother could have said anything, Esteban Wilson loved me. "

Lilian went crazy from Brenda’s obsession that she was the love of Esteban Wilson's life. She said that Esteban will return to Jacksontown and to her as soon as his Manhattan show is be over, but on the last day he was hit by a bus.  
Brenda refused to show the picture to anybody. She said that it was the only thing that Esteban left to her, and she wouldn’t share with the crowd of curiosity seekers or the pedant critics who have always been despised by Esteban.”After my death, the world can stare at it as much as they want. Now, however, I will keep it for myself.  
Brendon inserted the key into the lock. The door clogged, and he had to push it with his shoulder. As he entered something flow against him. After a long cursing he bumped his head into a joist, then he just sweared even better. His words echoed between the walls. When his heartbeat normalized, he turned his cap back and walked inside.  
The ancient paddles of the former waiting room had a thick layer of bird droppings, rusty stripes ran all over the place. In the middle of the floor there was a stinky puddle, old bones and broken furniture lay all over the premise.  
Under the booking clerk, a pile of dirty blankets, old newspapers and empty cans indicated that somebody lived here some time ago. Brendon tought it may be his future-self.  
Brendon's dust allergy revived and he began to sneeze. When he got better, he took out the flashlight he had brought with him, and started searching for the painting.  
Besides the waiting room, there were also storage rooms, closets, a little office behind the ticket booth, public toilets full of filthy and broken porcelain wash basins, and a tremendous amount of trash.  
In the next two hours he found some broken furniture, boxes, filing cabinets, multiple mouse-nests and a dead bird. The last one would have been appreciated by Bogart. He could have felt sorry now for not coming with Brendon.  
But nothing showed any sign of the painting. Brendon sat down to a bench with dirty clothes, he was sneezing and he was exhausted. He didn’t have any idea of other places where Brenda could have hid the painting.  
His mood got even worse because he had only fifty dollars left. If he wanted to eat, he had to find a job.  
“What a lovely place.”  
Brendon sneezed, then turned around and he saw Dallon at the door. He looked like a jogger, who just jumped in to say hi.  
He was wearing black training shoes and gray sweatpants with matching sweat suit and his hair was stylishly disheveled. However, as he gazed over his sunglasses with cold eyes he reminded Brendon more like a hobby-hunter than a civilized ordinary sportsman.  
“Should I be afraid? If you came here to attack me again, it would be better to wear a jockstrap because next time I will not be so indulgent.”  
Dallon's eyebrows ran to the center of his forehead. “I just offered you a kick in the balls  
before you misunderstand it.”  
“How combative.” Dallon answered then he hung his branded sunglasses on his zipper and took a few steps in. “It is interesting that Brenda left this place for you. But….considering her feelings for her family, it is not that surprising.”  
“ It has good price if you want to buy it. Of course, it’s double for you.”  
“No thank you.”  
“This place made you rich. You should be more grateful.”  
"The ‘Gospel for the fallen ones’ is about the city. The station building is a metaphor in it.” Brendon was annoyed by the well-known, preaching, high-minded tone of Dallon’s voice.  
“I thought ‘metaphor’ is a new amphetamine. Do you always dress like a vagrant?” Brendon was excessive. Dallon's clothes seemed branded and expensive.  
“As often as possible.”  
“You look shitty.” It was an exaggeration too. He was embarrassingly hot in that outfit.  
“You're a real trendsetter, though.” Dallon gave a pejorative glance at the worn-out, ripped jeans and the dirty t-shirt Brendon wore. His blue eyes stuck on his tattoos on his arm and inquired them with interest. Brendon jacket was tied to his waist because he was overwhelmed, but it was really worn with its cracked fake-leather.  
Brendon took off his black baseball cap and slid off of it some spiderweb.  
“You were a terrible teacher by the way. Just saying. Nothing personal.” They both knew it was.  
“I was terribly good.” Dallon kicked a piece of cable with the nose of his shoe.  
“Teachers should feed the students' self-confidence. You said we were pampered brats.”  
“I was right, didn’t I?”  
Brendon rolled his eyes.  
Dallon was a terrible teacher in that way, really. He was critical and impatient. But he could be wonderful every now and then.  
Brendon remembered when he read something to them and the words came out of his mouth like melody. Sometimes the classroom was as silent as if it were night, and Brendon imagined sitting around a campfire somewhere in the dark. Dallon's voice was special, and for some reason Brendon liked to listen.  
When he read to them, the skeptical overtones disappeared and it calmed Brendon like a reassuring friend's voice. Of course it was just an illusion, and as soon as the poem was over, Dallon told them that they would never be able to do things like these because they are too lazy to create.  
Because of this, or the fact that his youth had caused some bizarre confidence in the students, he inspired them.  
The laziest ones found themselves reading a book, athletes decided to write poetry, and the shy ones started to stand up for themselves, just because of their teacher’s scolding. Brendon remembered that Dallon Weekes was the teacher who taught him how to write a paragraph so that it would make sense. It was a benefit with the divorce papers.  
As Brendon replaced his cap, the other man watched the muddy water on the floor with unconcealed disgust.  
"Is it true that you didn’t go to your father's funeral?" This is abject even from you.”  
“Oh god, he plays Sherlock again..” Brendon shook his head, but Dallon gave him that kind of strict look, that made him feel seventeen again and then he answered with a sigh. “He was dead. I don’t think he noticed it.”  
He stood up and followed Dallon, who looked around the place. "I saw you’d been photographed for your book cover at my properity! I want a royalty! A few kilos will be fine.  
“Sue me.” The bored answer came.  
Brendon threw a few piles aside with forced groaning.  
“Why did you come here by the way? Your squeamishness doesn’t help.”  
“To watch your suffering gloatingly. What else did you think?” Dallon leaned to a dickey column and started to watch his nails with fake interest. Brendon hoped the old wood gives up, and the ceiling falls down on his ex-teacher.  
When this didn’t happen, he wanted to catch the leg of a broken chair around him and hit him with it, but he would probably punch back, so Brendon forced himself to keep his sobriety.  
“How well did you know my aunt?” He tiffed.  
“Very well.”  
Brendon was surprised that Dallon, who had been looking disgusted so far, did not dampen by the dirt when he went to the ticket window to examine it.  
“As an enthusiastic supporter of history, she was an invaluable data source, but she was narrow-minded. I didn’t like her at all.”  
“Me too! High five!!” Brendon produced an exaltation of fake joy, but he only got a scornful glance as a response. “Weeell.. I forgot we are still not ‘bff’-s.”  
Dallon slid his finger across one of the iron grids, looked down at how dusty it was, then took out a snow-white handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the dirt off.  
“Many people doubt that the painting exists.”  
Brendon spared himself to ask Dallon how he knew he was looking for Esteban’s artwork. By now, everyone in the city was aware of Brenda's will.  
“It’s exsists. End of story." Brendon didn’t dare to think of another alternative.  
“I think so too. But how do you know that?”  
“None of your business.” Brendon pointed to a pile of boxes. “There's a dead body behind them. Make yourself useful and get it out of here.”  
Dallon squinted towards the crates, but didn’t move a single finger to do anything.  
“Your aunt was an idiot.”  
“Family trait. Do not expect me to be ashamed. And do you know why? Because  
the exterior is a remedy for everything. Have you ever been married?” - Brendon tattled.  
“I was. We divorced.”  
Brendon wanted to ask him about the fun facts, for example whether he had been caught too that a man kneeled in front of him in the guestroom floor.  
But he was a good boy now and yesterday it went to the dogs, that he couldn’t shut his mouth, and he didn’t want Dallon to take care of it again.  
There was something embarrassingly insincere in this thought, but Brendon shook his head to shook out of it. By the way, he was curious what kind of a woman had connected her life with such a captious, impossible figure like him  
after his repute was defiled by a seventeen-year-old asshole. Then he remembered the high school girls who even after Dallon had crushed their souls with an unveiled call down still dreamt about him.  
Dallon ended the scanning of the ticketing window.  
“Tell me why you were away from your father's funeral.” It seemed as if Dallon was willing to drop just a little information in exchange for the lot. Injustice.  
“Why are you interested?”  
“I'm a writer. Self-worshiping minds fascinate me.”  
“I swear my head aches because of these big words…” Brendon massaged his temples.  
“You were a very smart student. Really. "Dallon studied the carpenter's structure. “You had a good brain for almost everything, but you didn’t use it for anything reasonable.”  
“Do you want to insult me with the porno magazine stuff again? As I said, that has become my benefit. I don’t really want to prove it.”  
Dallon's face shifted, and in the mind of Brendon, the crowd applauded him for the embarrassing response. Imaginary-Madeline shook her head disapprovingly.  
“Missing the funeral is a big boldness." Dallon changed the conversation’s theme from the hazardous waters.  
“I had to go to the hairdresser.” Brendon added and the other man looked down to his Police watch, but Brendon didn’t intend to give details of that terrible year.  
It started very well. He was the most popular freshman at the University, and he was so caught up in college life that he had forgotten about his friends.  
He missed their phone calls and didn’t even meet them when they went to visit.  
He even cheated on Ryan. Then one morning in January, Charles called and told him that Lilian had died of a stroke during the night.  
Brendon was inconsolable. He’d thought that worse couldn’t happen to him when, just a year later, his father announced that he marries his old lover. Charles expected that Brendon will sit in the front row at the church at the wedding. But he was only yelling that he hates him and he hurled his father with the fact that he never puts his foot in Jacksontown again. Despite Charles threats that he disinherits him of his legacy, Brendon kept his word, and never went home after that.  
He spent the wedding day in bed with one of his classmates trying to ease his sorrow with bad sex, and he missed Ryan’s calls. Shortly after Charles found Brendon's penitent confession among Lilian’s papers.  
Within days, everyone knew that he lied about Dallon, and the people who didn’t like Brendon so far, now hated him. His best friends, who had been hurt by the fact that he abandoned them, never talked to him again.  
Brendon tried to fix it after Ryan was no longer looking for him either. Sarah was the only hope for Brendon that at least he could make up his relationship with his father.  
However, Charles didn’t go to their wedding. All Brendon’s hopes were crushed, but Sarah was there. However, the fate ended the fight between father and son. Half a year after Brendon's wedding, Charles had a heart attack and died. Brendon only then found out, that his father had made good on his threat about the heritage and he didn’t care about his son’s marriage at all.  
Brendon lost his mother, his father, his best friends, Ryan and he lost Green Gentleman too in a year and a half. He was too young to know that this was just the beginning.  
“I hope your divorce had made some money for you from the Orzechowski family” Dallon said, without real interest for the answer.  
“This is beside the point. Arthur Cohen bought two BMWs from it, I guess. Or maybe Porsche. God only knows.”  
“ Harrowing.” Dallon added.  
Brendon took his keys out from his pocket with a sigh. He was fleeing before he was overwhelmed by the fact that Dallon despised him almost as much as he despised himself.  
“It was awesome to talk to you, but I have to close because I have so much things to do.”  
“Car polisher and hairdresser?”  
“Later. I need to find a job first.”  
One elegant arced eyebrow rised up.  
“Job? I don’t believe it!”  
“I'm bored, I have too much spare time.” Brendon rolled his eyes after he turned his back to the other man.  
“People think that Madeline Waldorf has taken you into her legacy.”  
Brendon thought about Bogart and the burgundy jacket, and the fact how happy Madeline was when they won two hundred dollars in poker at Atlantic City on Brendon's birthday. But she gave him something else too, what worthed much more than finances. Her love and faith. But Dallon obviously didn’t even think about this kind of legacy.  
“Aye!”  
Dallon looked around at the terrible station building and then angered him by a razor-sharped smile.  
"You really went bankrupt, didn’t you?"  
“Just until I find the painting.”  
“If you find it.”  
“I will! You can count on it!”  
As Brendon walked to the door, he had to force himself not to run. Dallon found the only point again that was clear in his conscience and tried to outrage it.  
Brendon knew he deserved it, but there was a thin edge between martyrdom and suicide that he didn't want to cross. He will not play into Dallon’s hand in killing his self esteem.  
“I'm sorry you can’t stay anymore, Mr Weekes!”  
Dallon followed him with long, lazy steps with a self-satisfied smile on his face.  
“ Let me be sure I understand it! Do you really have to work to survive?” Brendon could hear out his enjoyment from his voice.  
”I'm doing it very well.” Brendon pushed the key in more forcefully than he should have.  
“You’ll be a waiter again?”  
“It's a decent job.” Brendon walked towards the car and tried to pretend he didn’t want to escape. Just when he got there, the other man shouted after him from the station building’s staircase.  
“If you can’t find a job, call me. Maybe I can offer you something.”  
“All right, noted.” Brendon responded. "Dear Lord save me from it " he added under his nose and opened the car’s door, then turned towards Dallon. “If you don’t want the territory-war go hardcore, get off that chain from the driveway!”  
Dallon was having so much fun.  
“Is this a threat, Brendon?"  
Brendon’s mouth has dried out as his name slipped out of the other man’s lips. He was kinda disturbed every time he heard it from Dallon's mouth. Not as much as from his perfect hair, or the scent that hung around him, but he certainly didn’t feel comfortable from it.  
" It is a good advice." he pointed out, then he slipped into the car and drove away.  
When he looked into the rear-view mirror, he saw his ex teacher leaning against his black Range Rover elegantly and absently. Only he could perform such a hot picture in a jogger. Cold-hearted villain.

 

Brendon later stopped in a parking lot. He opened a newspaper on the steering wheel and searched for job advertisements. He reminded himself that he doesn’t have to work long, just until he finds the painting. Then he goes back to Houston.  
Nobody was looking for a waiter, which wasn’t really a problem, as the idea of serving hamburgers to those who he commanded gave him nausea.  
He had three options: a bakery, an insurance agency, and an antique store. He circled them then went home to quickly shower.  
A map copy was raised to the front door. He opened it and saw that Dallon was right. The driveway belonged to Green Gentleman.  
He shaved and adjusted his hair and slipped into the most conservative outfit he had, what was the only intact black trousers and white t-shirt. He grabbed his gray, discounted sport suit, and some anxiety then left the house.  
Since the insurance agency recommended the most money, he decided to start there. But behind the staff desk unfortunately he saw Lauren "Lolo" Pitchard.  
Brendon liked Lolo at high school and didn’t even remember that he would have done anything against her, but he soon found out that Lauren remembered otherwise.  
Then Brendon realized that he had promised her to play her song at the homecoming ball, but at the last minute, he decided to rewrite it. Brendon was curious whether she sings nowadays.  
“Well, Brendon Boyd Urie, I heard you came back, but I didn’t expect to see you here.” The woman knocked on the counter with her short, dark manicure, and frustrated Brendon with it. “So you're looking for a job.” she asked and didn’t even offer him a seat. “You have to understand, we can only hire someone who seriously wants to build a career with us.”  
According to Brendon, an average office job at a small town isn’t exactly a career, but he thought it would be better to put a lock on his mouth.  
“Less is not even enough for me!”  
“We're looking for someone who’s thinkiing in long-term. Do you intend to stay at Jacksontown?”  
Brendon knew this question was going to appear, it was necesarry to beat around the bush.  
"You may have heard that I have a house here.”  
“Does that mean you’ll stay?" The opportunity that " Little Lolo "could instruct the Urie’s doubtful son was a big temptation for Lauren to give him the job. In the light of that, Brendon answered politely.  
“I cannot promise to stay here until I die, but I plan to settle here for a while.”  
”Well…” Lauren looked through the papers, then gave one of them to Brendon with a sneer smile.  
“Don’t you mind if you need to complete a test? About the minimum of math and some english language skills. Unfortunately, french knowledge isn’t a criterion.”  
Brendon couldn’t bite his tongue longer.  
“Not at all. I'm very good at math. You know best, since you always copied my algebra homework. You know...I was hoping that you wouldn’t mind if I do a little bit of change in your song.” He found himself in the street thirty seconds later.  
The “Golden Days” bakery was "Fever" café in Brendon's childhood.  
He was expecting a sale job, so when he got asked if he could bake a hundred macarons in a day, the plan was off, before he could ask which cake is that.  
The last hope was the antique shop.  
In the "New Americana" show-window there was a tape recorder and many old postcards with James Dean, Audrey Hepburn and Frank Sinatra's faces on them, as well as cigarette cases and a time-consuming camera.  
Brendon became interested. He expected so much worse, but this style was close to him. He hoped that the owner is new in Jacksontown, like the baker, and hasn’t heard about his reputation.  
The old-fashioned bell swirled when Brendon opened the door and Johnny Cash's melodies of ‘I walk the line’ filled the room.  
Brendon smelled the mixture of spicy fragrance and the pleasantly old scent of the past. Antique desks stood around the walls, featured with English porcelains and silver ashtrays. Everything was high quality, perfectly arranged and beautifully maintained.  
He heard a woman’s voice behind his back. “I’m coming!”  
“I have time!” Brendon answered while he was admiring a signet ring that was more beautiful than his own, when a woman came back from the back of the room.  
Her hair was short, but feminine and elegant. She wore pale gray pants and a matching pastel cashmere sweater, with a brooch made of emeralds and turquoises on her chest.  
A cold shivering run down on Brendon’s spine. The brooch. Images flashed in his head as her mother wore that every family meeting and ceremony.  
It was a family legacy, and was actually owned by his grandfather, but Lilian always wear it proudly. She said it will be Brendon's graduation gift and they will buy a matching aquamarine jacket for the big occasion. It was a pity that her mother couldn’t live to see it.  
The woman smiled. “Hello! Can I hel...?” She turned towards Brendon then stopped.  
She was standing under a French chandelier, holding one of her legs in front of the other, with a frozen smile on her face. Brendon would have recognized her glance anywhere. The same almost black, huge pair of eyes looked back at him from the mirror every morning. His father's eyes. And his father's daughter's eyes.  
The old bitterness cramped Brendon's stomach.  
Intelligent men kept their illegitimate children away from the legitimate, but Charles Urie didn’t. They were born at the same town, and they lived only three miles apart, and because Charles was infinitely selfish, he didn’t even think of how terrible it was for Brendon and Ashley to go to the same school.  
In one year, he got two women pregnant - first Lilian, then Sabrina Frangipane.  
Lilian didn’t care about them, and she hoped that the love of Sabrina and Charles was just a crush, and will go away as the way it came. She didn’t want to take revenge on them either. She was not that pity.  
Lilian still remained calm when they didn’t break up. "It's the excellence of learning to overcome things, Brendon. Let him keep that woman. I have Green Gentleman here. And it will be yours someday."  
Whenever Brendon got angry by the fact that he had to go to the same school with Ashley, Lilian got angry.  
“Nothing is worse than the pity of others. Get yourself out of your mind and remember that once everything that your father owns will be yours. You are his only son, even if that little girl is there too."  
But Lilian was wrong. Charles eventually changed his will and left everything to Sabrina and Ashley.  
The elegant woman standing in front of Brendon barely reminded him to the diffident girl from high school who had stumbled in her own feet when someone accosted her.  
The old feeling of inability overwhelmed Brendon. As a child, he couldn’t control the adults, so he practiced his influence in the only possible way: - over his father's illegitimate daughter.  
Ashley stood motionless in the shop’s center.  
“What are you doing here?” She asked. Brendon couldn’t tell her he came here to apply for a job.  
“I went to the record store on the other side of the street, but they were on a lunch break” He improvised in a hoarse voice.  
Ashley regained her presence of soul much earlier than Brendon did.  
“Do you look for something specific? I have some records, too." She said with folded arms.  
Where is this attitude from?  
The Ashley, whom Brendon remembered, flushed and shivered every time she got asked about something. Thanks to Brendon, she also bursted in tears very often, but it seemed that besides her short stature, her high heels lifted her self-confidence too.  
“N-no. Just looking around…” Brendon heard his voice shake, and in Ashley's satisfied eyes, he saw that she recognized it too. He tried some throat grinding and sniffeling as a diversion. “I’m cold.”  
“Hall deals mostly with discs made afterwards or recents. This is original Sinatra. From 1956. " Ashley talked, adjusting the brooch on her chest. Brendon pressed his lips together from the anger.  
“I like Sinatra. Do you? Somehow, when I’m listening to it, family christmases come to my mind.” Ashley fiddled with the emerald crystals and looked at Brendon with an absently curious glance.  
“My mom always told me that dad loved Sinatra very much.”  
Brendon's face ran out of blood. She talked about his father and caressed his mother's legacy. She couldn’t have any idea of family christmases and Charles didn’t like Sinatra that much. Lilian adored the singer. Ashley did it directly. She was cruel and cold, just like Brendon when he gushed loudly around her about how wonderful the christmas at Green Gentleman is, and that the whole big family who counts celebrates together.  
Brendon couldn’t stand it anymore. He couldn’t stand there and watch his mother's memory on Ashley's chest. She had no right to threw the past in his face. He swallowed it from Dallon because the hatred of him was legitimate. But it was Ashley, and her pathetic mother who had ruined everything and took his father from Brendon.  
He turned to the door, but moved too suddenly and crushed one of the tables, exactly as Ashley did in the past.  
A metal plate from 1945 dropped from the wall and snapped heavily on the floor.  
Brendon didn’t even stop to pick it up. Anxiety, sadness, and loneliness squeezed in him as he rushed to the car.  
In his imagination, he even heard Madeline's shoe knocking on the concrete "Don’t run my son, you're stronger than that!"  
The Escort’s tires left behind a cloud of dust when Brendon stepped on the accelerator pedal.


	4. 4. ”...Your little brother never tells you but he loves you so, You said your mother only smiled on her tv show, You’re only happy when your sorry head is filled with dope, I hope you make it to the day you’re twenty-eight years old…”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one with the Ross family.

"June, the dinner is ready!" Ashley shouted upstairs.  
She almost heard the pouting of her ten-year-old daughter, when she sees the dinner. June was smart, and perhaps too much compared to her age, so the rebellion era had happened sooner. She was not a teenager yet, but Ashley felt its wind on her. Tonight, in particular, she didn’t have the mood to fight with her daughter, though she knew it would be inevitable, she did her best to avoid it.  
June walked down the stairs sullenly, in an elongated T-shirt and ripped jeans. Ashley wasn’t surprised at her daughter's apparel, according to her new mania, that she wanted to dress from second hand shops only.  
“Did you wash your hand?” Ashley asked kindly.  
“No, I wiped the dust off the stairs with it.”  
Her mother clenched her lips.  
“Then please help me with the salad.” June sighed and started to do so, while gazing at her mother like a mistrustful kitten. She seemed upset.  
“Mrs. Smith called me about your history essay. You got a ‘C’.”  
“ ‘C’ isn’t that bad. I'm not as smart as you are.”  
Her mother sighed because she knew this wasn’t true. For a moment Ashley seemed so sad that June wanted to apologize to her for being so abominable and to promise she will do better next time, but she couldn’t say it out loud. Her mother didn’t understand anything. June hated being smarter than the others, she hated being the rich, smart, pretty little girl in the class. She just wanted to be average.  
They set the dinner. There was a bag of prepackaged salad in the crystal bowl that only consisted of green leaves and some dry carrots. In the good old days, her mother made a salad of fresh tomatoes, emmental cheese and tuna. He even put some roasted pieces of bread on it because June liked it.   
“There’s no tuna in it.” June complained.  
“I didn’t have time to go to the market, I'm sorry!” Ashley walked to the back door. “Ryan, is the meat ready?”  
“Few minutes!”  
June’s father was the boss of the Brickyard, which was a great responsibility. The factory was her grandmother’s, but it was run by the board of directors headed by Ryan. He worked hard for this position just like anyone else. June once heard her mother told her grandmother that Ryan worked so much because he still felt like he had to prove.  
Financial stuffs were very complicated for June. The Brickyard was, for example her grandma’s, but Green Gentleman was Ashley’s at some point. But her mother didn’t live in it and it was empty until Mr. Weekes had bought it. June liked Dallon because he always spoke with her like she was a grown-up. Even when she told him that she won't read bullshits like "War and Peace”.  
“I'm here” Ryan entered the door and winked as he put the tray on the table. He was thirty years old, Ashley was twenty-eight. Most of his friends' parents were much older, but June was born in his parents' really young age.   
Everyone else would have been proud for the youthful parents, but June didn’t like it, of course. Her mother was too beautiful and June was afraid that when her classmates became teenagers, they would say things about her, or they would have a crush on her. The situation would be unpleasant.  
At the beginning of the year, Dalma, with whom June was still good friends back then, said that June's father was cute and attractive. The girls have already begun this, and June didn’t like it. Besides, Ryan is her dad. Only she can call him cute. She was even more angry when another girl told her that her father was very sexy when he was wearing a suit. The others didn’t even know what the word “sexy” means! June knew it thanks to reading a lot and she didn’t want anybody to think her father is sexy except her mother.  
She mostly looked like her father. Her face, her hair color, and her snubby nose were all like Ryan's, with the exception of her Cleopatra haircut.   
But her eyes were his mother’s and her grandfather’s inherit. They were deep, powerful and dark. June liked her father’s eyes more. She thought the hazel color is more special. Whatever her grandma would say, she was more like her father than her mother.  
Her father took the wine glasses to the table, and they all sat down. Her mother said the table blessing, and then her father passed the meat pan.   
“So, June, how's the school going?”  
“Boring.” Her parents looked at each other, making June wanting to recall what she had said. They thought her grades were getting worse because the lessons were not exciting enough, which was true, but it had nothing to do with the situation. Mr. Weekes wouldn’t be happy, if he knew that June let her grades drop directly. Not to mention her parents, but Dallon was a teacher, and he told June explicitly that she would go to the best High School with her good brain.  
“ I mean my classmates are boring!” She added quickly. "The lessons were very interesting this week, and the teachers were excellent.”  
Ashley raised her eyebrows, Ryan shook his head. One thing couldn’t be argued... Her parents were not stupid.  
“It’s interesting, that no matter how good the lessons are, the best grade you can get for your test papers is only a ‘C’ .” Her father looked at her with objective strictness.  
June knew she was walking on thin ice. If she’s on the top of the class, everyone will hate her because she is also rich and smart, but if she does too bad, she can easily find herself in a boarding school and she didn’t want to.  
“I had a headache. I'm sure next time it will turn out better.”  
She looked at her father again, and she saw the same concern in his eyes she had seen many times lately.  
“Why don’t you come with me to the Brickyard on Saturday? I won’t stay long and you could play with the computer.” June rolled her eyes. She had loved to go to the factory with her father not long ago, but now she was already bored to death.  
“No thanks. Me and Chelsea are going to Shannon’s.”  
"Chelsea and I." Ashley said.  
“You come too? Then canceled.”  
“It's enough now, June!” Her father snapped. “Don’t you think you're too young to disrespect?”  
June was sour, but she didn’t dare to talk back to her father.  
Ashley didn’t speak much in the rest of the dinner, which was unusual from her, because usually when Ryan ate with them, she tried to entertain him. She always raised some scanty and fascinating subjects. But today it seemed like, Ashley hadn’t been there, and June wondered if it was related to the fact that “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” has returned to the city. She was angry for her parents that they didn’t tell her. She found it out from Chelsea, who knew it from her mother. June thought her parents acted as if she were a dumb kindergarten child, but she was just curious.   
The phone rang and she jumped up to pick it up because she knew it’s her best friend.  
“Can I go?” The girl was expecting her mother to say no, as always, but Ashley didn’t said that, so June grabbed the phone and ran up the stairs.  
It was nine in the afternoon and everything was strange today. But June didn’t have time to care about it now, when her best friend was on the phone. Sometimes June was an average child, she just didn’t realized it.

Ashley watched June disappearing upstairs and wondered what had happened to her little girl who used to be so glad just to be with her. A year ago, June always rushed home from school and she was so in a hurry to share with her mother what had happened with her that day. Sometimes Ashley wondered if all the changing in her daughter’s behavior might be because June is precocious like she was at her younger age. She was only ten but she behaved like a teenager. Ryan glanced at the door.  
“Don’t let her spend so much time with Chelsea. That little girl is a madcap.”  
“Well, and what should I do? Prohibit her from her best friend?”  
Ryan sighed.  
“Sorry, I know it's not your fault. I’m just caught up in the idea that she gets bored of her and we can get our daughter back.”  
Ashley and Ryan never shouted at each other. They didn’t always agree, but these situations never went further than some kind of cold silence between them. Ryan leaned back on the chair.  
“And these clothes…”  
“She doesn’t listen to me. That's what she likes. You said she will get bored of them.”  
“I hoped. Perhaps it should be clarified that it’s too early for her to rebel.”  
Ashley threw her napkin onto the desk.  
“Okay, but this time it’s your job to talk with her. She already hates me enough.”  
How could this happen? Ashley tried so hard to be a good mother to June, and not to be like her own mother.   
Sabrina had done all she could, but her existence depended on the goodwill of Charles Urie and she turned all her energy to satisfy the man's delight, while her daughter wanted to be loved by her too.  
Ashley tried to give June all she wanted. It was a pity that the little girl didn’t have any great demands. This didn’t ease Ashley's job.   
Sabrina hated Lilian Urie with all of her heart. The fact that Lilian gave birth to a talented and handsome boy, like Brendon, while all she had was an "ordinary" child who was a girl (she was obviously afraid she couldn’t inherit the family name ) just made it worse. Even though Charles gave all of his love to his daughter.  
Sabrina knew her lover's basically ruthless nature and she was always afraid of when would Charles give all of his attention to his legitimate child. However, this never happened, and Ahsley still missed her father so bad. They loved each other. She was ‘daddy's only little daughter,’ as Charles used to say.  
"June doesn’t hate you" Ryan said. “She’s just thinking too much compared to her age. She is a smart girl and very much like you. The same poles often toss each other, but I don’t think it's a permanent state.”  
“No, It's about more. I could beat those girls who are teasing her at the school.”  
“She can protect herself from those children.”  
Ashley wanted to interjaculate with the fact that Ryan compared June to her earlier but she didn’t. She didn’t need more memories from the past. Her head was aching. She wanted to tell Ryan that she met Brendon at the store today. Her secrecy would have meant giving too much importance to the matter. But as she tried to pour it into words, the wine glass slid out of her fingers and broke in the sink. She didn’t want to see Ryan's face when she mentioned his name.  
“Are you okay?” Ryan stood up and walked over to her. Ashley wanted Ryan to embrace her, but he was just staring at the fragments.  
“Everything is alright. Rather, please make a coffee while I clean it up.”  
As she threw the bigger pieces into the trash can, she wondered why she couldn’t be satisfied with this day.  
For Brendon the years haven’t passed without a trace, and for the first time Ashley gained advantage. Though Brendon had undoubtedly maintained his charm and the mysterious, heated eroticism which had flooded from all his poles and his eyes, and he was still as good-looking as he used to be, he seemed like someone who went through some things. Ashley hoped it was many things.  
Ashley began to blossom in her senior year. After Brendon and Ryan went to college. She tried to eat healthier and finally she had the courage to cut her hair.  
Perhaps she was still the same shy teenager on the inside, but from the outside everybody could see the new kind of self-assurance that she got after Charles and Sabrina's marriage. Suddenly, she became the rich girl who lived in Green Gentleman. Her fingers slick down the emerald brooch. When she saw the shock on Brendon's face, her heart had been filled with revenge. She should have been glad. The past has come to life in front of her mind while the kitchen was overwhelmed by the scent of roasted coffee.   
She was sixteen again, and she was just crossing through the gym when she stumbled and her algebra copybook slid down the floor.  
She still saw how one black Converse stepped on it gently then how Brendon bended down for the copybook and their similar eyes meeting with scattered sparks. She also saw the dangerous smirk, as Brendon’s dimples cruelly flashed on his face.  
“Give it back!” Ashley's high and scratchy voice was reflected on the ceiling of the gym.  
But it didn’t count anything, Brendon walked up to the grandstand as if he hadn’t heard it, and opened her book.  
Brendon was shorter than the other guys - only Kenny was less shorter than him - but he had twice as much authority and dignity in his attitude. His hair was perfect and rich brown, making his eyes darker and more dangerous. Not like Ashley’s dirty-blonde wavy tufts. He got the lips and perfect white teeth most women could only desire but Ashley loathed his perfectness. For her Brendon represented the pure evil to the depths of his soul.  
“Everybody look! The tasks aren’t the only thing Ashley does in her notebook. There are some pretty interesting notes in here!”  
Brendon’s retinue went silent. Ashley’s heart was beating in her throat.  
“I’m warning you Brendon…!” But Brendon only smiled and stepped higher on the grandstand. Ashley wanted to go after him but her shoe got stuck in between two chairs. She hissed while she tumbled.  
“Give it back!”  
Brendon smiled smuggly. He didn’t give a damn about her. “I don’t understand why are you worrying yourself to death. We are artists too. Altough definitely not this talented and spicy…” Brendon raised his eyebrows. He was indeed a really talented musician but nothing entertained him enough to start something with it beside school.  
Spencer looked around to see if there were any teachers nearby.  
“Maybe you shouldn’t read it out aloud, the coach might be around...we had to run ten laps the other day too.”  
“We are in need of sport anyway. I take it on!” Brendon’s face turned into a luscious smile from the pleasure to humiliate Ashley. “You won’t believe this!”  
Ashley swallowed her tears furiously. “This is personal! Give it back right now!”  
“Don’t be so childish!” Brendon scratched his face laughing. The sunshine blinked on the “B” on his signet ring, when he turned the page. “I was in my tennis skirt that he especially loves because it shows my butt. That’s no wonder.” He added while censoriously staring at Ashley whose lips were shaking.   
Linda and Victoria chuckled while the boys snorted letting Ashley know that she’s not in the category to be able to pull off a tennis skirt.  
She started to put her fantasies in writing a few month ago. In the beginning she also wrote some song lyrics and poems but there were quite a few of these and now Ashley lashed herself for it in her head.  
“Stop it Brendon!” Her voice became pleading.  
“No. No don’t stop!” Linda adjusted her tight cheerleader dress and crossed her legs.  
“And then he slipped his hands into my tiny lace panties under the dining table.” The way Brendon brought out the word ‘tiny’ made it obvious that Ashley’s panties weren’t exactly tiny. “I spreaded my legs...Jeez such a bad little girl!” Brendon hissed making Ashley feel like she could never step over the school’s entrance again.  
“His other hand glided through my inner tighs…” Brendon had his black eyes wide open pretending to be outraged. “Ashley Frangipane this is pornography!”  
“I like it” Kenny popped his bubblegum.  
Brendon turned the page over.  
“I love you Ashley ... you were red...and you liked me because I was blue ... you touched me and suddenly I was a lilac sky…” Brendon paused, his eyes running down the lines, looking for another bomb that could ruin Ashely's reputation. It didn’t take much time to find it.   
“Oh my god, listen guys! I spread my legs even more, as his fingers began to tingle me. I whispered his name…”  
Ashley's ears blastered, and the gym started to blur in front of her eyes, but Brendon didn’t pity her. ”Oh my love...Ryan!”  
Ashley’s blood turned cold.  
“Hey, Bren! What are you doing?”  
As a final word, Ryan Ross approached them from the back of the gym with Jon Walker and Brent Wilson, with whom they had private music class. Just like the other guys, only they had passed it, of course.  
Ashley only saw Ryan the guy with hazel eyes and nice face, the embodiment of her dream.  
She watched as Ryan climbed to the grandstand, and rested his chin on Brendon’s shoulder, but her stepbrother closed the book in front of his nose and looked down to Ashley meaningly. This was the moment when Ashley understood something. Her stomach thrilled.  
“I thought you had something to do, because you didn’t come to class.” Ryan said,  
“I just read something Ashley wrote. It’s very good!”  
“Really?” Ryan laughed, and Brendon's gaze softened as he looked at him. Ashley’s stomach stiched again when the two boys looked at her again in full compliance. But while Brendon looked contemptuous, Ryan was just curious. “Let's hear it!”  
Ashley wanted to escape from Jacksontown forever. As she stepped back, her leg slid down the stairs and she lost her balance.  
“Isn’t this an overstatement?” Spencer asked, but he was grinning and he loved being in their gang, so his resistance was merely courtesy.  
“No! Continue it! I want to hear the rest!” Kenny blew another bubblegum ball, almost as excited as if Ashley’s fantasies were about him.  
Brendon flashed his eyes with satisfaction, then looked back down on the notebook.  
“Should I go back to the exposed butt or to the tiny panties?”  
Ryan laughed into Brendon’s shoulder “That sounds great!”  
Brendon looked down at Ashley, his voice filled with viciousness. “Or should I start where she shouted her lover’s name?”  
Ashley felt sick. “Yeah, why shouldn’t I start with that? Oh my love…!”  
“That’s enough, Brendon!”  
Everyone turned around because of the well known strict voice. Ashley got herself up and watched as Mr. Weekes, her favourite teacher approached the grandstand. He was wearing a vest on top of his grey turtleneck sweater, his hair fell into his face and the rolled up trousers tightened around his waist. Nobody dressed like this from the teachers. Even though he might have been the youngest of all in the school everybody was afraid of him because of his attitude. Ashley admired him. Dallon never mocked her, he even gave her books from his owns to broaden her mind.  
Brendon didn’t give a sign of fear or nervousness, not like the others. He looked straight into the man’s eyes. “Come on Mr. Weekes we’re just fooling around! Aren’t we Ashley?”  
Ashley couldn’t even form the words. She couldn’t do anything.  
“Both of you come with me!” Dallon’s voice radiated with threatening calmness.  
“I have things to do Mr. Weekes” Brendon said blinking innocently, sweetly and politely. “Are you going to be in your room an hour later?”   
He spoke with exactly the same tone as if he would stand above everyone and be in an informal relation with every teacher. There wasn’t a teacher who ever dared to clash with him because they would have clashed with Lilian then. But Mr. Weekes didn’t know how much of an influence Brendon’s mother was.  
“I don’t care about your plans” he threw it coldly.  
Brendon shrugged his shoulder and gave the notebook to Ryan while he was running his eyes over Dallon. For a brief moment they looked into each other’s eyes like wolves do when they are trying to decide whether they are in the same pack.  
“I’m taking that” said Mr. Weekes.  
Ashley’s heart was beating in her throat when Ryan handed the notebook. At first she was humiliated in front of her classmates and now Dallon was also going to find out what a pervert she is.  
As to Ryan...She’s not going to be able to look him in the eye. The school’s yellow walls were choking her as they walked to the teacher’s room. Brendon chaffered, not caring for a second that his teacher didn’t care about him. Ashley silently followed them. When they reached the door Mr. Weekes stopped. Ashley stared at the ugly brown pavement. “I think this is yours Ashley”  
Asley looked at him anguished and beside the familiar stand-offishness she saw the kindness in Dallon’s eyes that nobody seemed to be noticing. She got her notebook back. She couldn’t believe it and her hand was shaking when she took it.   
“T-thank you”  
“You should have read it Mr Weekes! Everybody knows how smart Ashley is but I could bet on it that you had no idea how creative she is. Moreover you appreciate literature. Maybe not this kind, which I absolutely understand.”  
Dallon flashed his eyes, Ashley was just turning her head between them.  
“See you in class Ashley!” said Mr. Weekes without looking at her. “I expect you to write a perfect essay from Fitzgerald!” He continued to study Brendon and Ashley wanted to warn him to be careful with him but she couldn’t speak so she just nodded and gripped her notebook. Before turning around she saw Brendon’s face. She saw hatred in his eyes and she knew exactly why. She knew it will never disappear from it. Because even though Brendon had everything she didn’t have -beauty, popularity, confidence, Ryan -Ashley had something that Brendon desperately longed for. Their father’s love.  
Ashley threw the last piece of glass into the trash can. There was something more painful in that year than her outspread fantasies, but she didn’t want to think about that. She looked at Ryan instead.  
She comforted Ryan that summer when Brendon disappeared. He told Ashley all that they went through and all the things they did. She understood and assured him as a good friend, and told him there’s nothing wrong with Ryan and his feelings towards her stepbrother. She really meant, but when her relationship with Ryan turned serious, her fears appeared and she couldn’t overcome them.  
What if Brendon wasn’t just an elusory? What if Ryan still desires something she cannot give him? She was frightened of the thought.  
Although Ashley hadn’t change that much during the time the boys went to college, she wasn’t the ugly duckling anymore who she was long ago and Ryan noticed it.   
He always complimented her and emphasized how desirable she was for him. But it was always Ashley who took the first step.  
When Ashley realized she was pregnant, she could hardly tell him, but Ryan instead of getting angry, asked her to marry him. He even said he loved her, and Ashley pretended to believe it.  
But she knew it and she still does, that her husband's love for her was just a faint spark compared to the instinctive attraction he had for Brendon. Ryan didn’t look at her like he did at Brendon. With admiration and mysteriousness. She just wanted this. Just wanted Ryan to know this.  
Ashley took two coffee cups and put it on the counter. "Do you remember ... when Brendon found my notebook in the gym and wanted to read it to everyone?"  
Ryan looked into the fridge.”Is there some cream at home ?” Ashley knew she was on dangerous waters, but she needed the confirmation.  
“Behind the orange juice. I've written those sex fantasies about you and me.”  
”Really?” He straightened up, holding the cream then he smiled at her. “What kind of sexual fantasies?”  
“Didn’t he tell you?”  
“I do not know, honey.” Ryan's smile was fading. “It's been so many years ago. You shouldn’t care about what happened in high school that much.” He slammed the fridge door a bit harder than he should have. "I don’t understand why are you so distracted by him still. Finally, everything is yours. The Green Gentleman, millions in the bank. One day even the factory will be yours. Why are you wasting your time by stressing on high school stuffs?’”   
Ashley had regretted bringing up the topic instantly.  
“I’m not doing that.”  
It was a lie. Her whole life was determined by those difficult years: her spirit, her careful attention to her appearance, even her social sense. While Ryan filled their cups with coffee, the words just came out even though she didn’t know she wanted to tell him or not.  
“Brendon came to the store today." Only a wife could see the tiny jaw-clench of her husband.   
“What did he want?”  
“He was just looking around I guess. He didn’t know the store is mine.”  
Ryan liked his coffee with cream, but he didn’t put any in it now. He was just sipping it monotonously.  
“Jacksontown is a small town. Sooner or later you would have met with him.”  
Ashley began to wash the dinner plates.   
“He was wearing a cheap jacket. He looked exhausted, but still handsome. His sexual emission remained.”  
Ryan shrugged as if he didn’t care about it. Ashley wanted to change the subject, but nothing came to her mind. Perhaps Ryan felt the same because he put down his cup and looked at his wife.  
“Instead of this, don’t you want to tell me something about those sexual fantasies?” Ryan kissed her shoulder, Ashley closed the tap and forced a smile.  
"I was only seventeen. Bashful. But maybe you can convince me to give you something more sensual after June falls asleep.”  
Ryan crossed his arms, his mouth curved upwards.  
“Really?”  
Ashley liked the man's smile, but she was tired, angry, and what she really wanted was a hot bath, then a book in bed, but she took the most persuasive sound of her voice still.  
“Sure…” She started to caress him and Ryan kissed her.  
“I tell the princess it’s time to go to bed.”  
"Thank you" Ashley said, and for some reason they both knew she was greatful not only for the help but at the same for nothing.  
After Ryan disappeared, Ashley took her cup and took it to the workroom. She had a little paperwork and she should have make some phone calls about the concert, but she went to the window instead.  
Something was wrong, she had enough. She wanted her husband to love her, and she wanted to love him too. But now she didn’t feel any desire at all.   
Ryan was an attentive lover, but for them the whole thing was ruined at the beginning. Ashley didn’t want to play the second fiddle besides Brendon and she did everything to avoid it.  
Though Ryan was more experienced, Ashley had set herself as a red-blooded lover, and this lineup hasn’t changed since. She always stood by Ryan, always returning his approach. She never complained about headaches, never asked for anything. She was the persecutor, Ryan was the persecuted. However, because of this she felt herself as a beard even more and Ryan even though he loved her, was angry about that. Not always, just sometimes. Just like today. Today everything was blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next one will be Brallon ;)


	5. ”I've got my heavy heart to hold me down, once it falls apart my head's in the clouds, So I'm taking every chance I got, like the man I know I'm not…”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one when something started.

Brendon switched the food bags in his hands, but because they were equally heavy, it didn’t make so much sense. The few bottle of mineral water, a few cans of dog food and the another pack of cola seemed much lighter at the shop.  
The fact that he didn’t care about the traffic tickets didn’t make them disappear, and he had to collect all his masculine competence about football this morning when somebody wanted to haul the Escort. Then he became more careful and he put his car in a car park half a mile from Mona Lisa Lane.   
It would have been a pleasant walk if he hadn’t done it for the second time today, and it was more difficult with his packages. Fabricating some revenge against Dallon Weekes caught his attention for a while, but it was joy mingled with pain- game after all.  
He wasn’t getting any luck since he did a disastrous visit at Ashley's vintage shop last week.   
He found no job or painting, and there was nothing left in his wallet, but moth. At least he found the past members of Brenda's “Old maid club”, but only Petunia Thomson said that she saw the painting. Unfortunately, she also said that she was going to Las Vegas at the afternoon and have a dinner with Frank Sinatra.  
Brendon’s cell phone began to ring in his pocket. As he put down his bags on the sidewalk, he wondered when will the service provider block his phone.  
“Hi! It’s me. You told me to call you when there is some development” said a pleasant, familiar male voice after Brendon picked it up.  
His stomach got twiched, though he knew he wouldn’t get bad news.   
“Hi, Pete! "   
Dr. Pete Wentz was a specialist in the Houston City Hospital and Brendon was in good spirits with him since the last few months before he left to Jacksontown. “How is she?”  
“Well! Yesterday she slept through the whole day but she opened her eyes for five minutes today. She is run-down, but not as much as we expected. So everything is alright, calm down.”  
Brendon had a big stone falling off of his heart. He sighed and sat on the bag with the dog food to rub his forehead.  
“When will be the next treatment?”  
"Next week, but I doubt she will be awake enough time for you to talk with her. But, Brendon …” Pete's voice was worried.  
“I know, Pete. I'm on it …”  
“It's not about the current bill ... Cancer spreaded fast and if she doesn’t get the whole treatment I don’t know what can I figure out...The hospital doesn’t want to give more advance...Maybe me...or…”  
Pete's voice was kind, understanding but he helped Brendon a lot already.   
He didn’t want to misuse his kindness.  
Brendon thought of the painting and the promise he made for himself and Madeline. He tried to swallow his fears and hopelessness.  
“I'm in the straight line I just need a little more time.” Always this. The hunt for a little more time. Brendon sighed again.   
“ I will solve it somehow, Brendon. Don’t worry.” Pete added.  
“Please, call me when there's something going on. And thank you! Everything.”  
As he put back the phone to his packet the same helpless anger flared up again in his chest that he felt when things turned out.  
"I was too coward to face it, and I didn’t have anyone!" Madeline said.  
"But I'm here now. I count nothing?” Brendon couldn’t endure the idea of losing her too.  
“Of course you count you are my son! But you can’t work from morning to night for an old woman’s life!” Madeline’s eyes were sad, as she caressed his face.  
Brendon only came back to Jacksontown because of her since they ran out of money for the treatment, and they just got a loan from the hospital. If he doesn’t find Esteban’s painting no miracle medicine will help, that Pete swore on, even though it was only experimental. But he didn’t want to pity himself. It was a great gift if someone could love unconditionally and Brendon knew this. He tried to relax his shoulders wearily.  
As he picked up his bags a familiar black Range Rover pulled over right next to him. The window on the driver’s side rolled down and a face appeared with superior expression on it.   
It belonged to the Prince of Destiny himself.  
“You look like a homeless”  
Brendon assumed that Dallon ment the bags and not his jeans and motorcycle jacket. Those looked pretty good on him.  
“Thanks! Hope you have a good day too!”  
Dallon looked him up and down through his damn sunglasses.  
Brendon was charmingly unshaven, his hair exceptionally wasn’t styled, but it still looked perfect. “Need a ride?”  
“You let peasants into your car?”  
“Only if generosity crashes on me. Believe me I know how it broke your heart to come back to the city in a broke down car.”  
“Wow how lucky I am! You’re a real good Samaritan!”  
Brendon had to wait until the man unlocked the car lock. He opened the back door and put the bags behind the seat. Then, because dignity still mattered something to him he climbed between them and closed the door. He could immediately smell money, drapery and Dallon’s fragrance.  
“Drive!” he sniffled.  
Dallon threw his arm over the car seat and looked at him after he pushed his sunglasses into his hair. Brendon strived to give his most haughty look, and to resist idling over his fingers and the veins popping out on his neck. “I really don’t have time for this!”  
“Maybe you should walk afterall.”  
“What would the neighbours say? A homeless in their street.”  
Brendon gladly acknowledged that Dallon stepped on the gas a little bit harder than needed and his voice was shaking. “You’re going to tell me if there’s anything more I can do for your convinience right?”  
Brendon stared at Dallon’s broad shoulders. “You could take that stupid little chain off my driveway.”  
“But why? I think it’s fun.” The man turned to Mona Lisa Lane.  
“Hahahahaha-ha-ha” Brendon forced a laughter to which Dallon curiously glanced at him through the rear-view mirror. “This was my ‘Wow what a humor from a poker face, let’s appreciate it!’ laughter. It’s in progress.”  
“This morning I saw a hauler beside your car, I’m awfully sorry!” Dallon ignored Brendon’s brilliant comeback. From his voice-tone it was obvious that he didn’t feel sorry at all.  
“Don’t bother! He was a really cute guy, really decent. He didn’t let injustice carry the day.”  
“So you suceeded in dissuading him from hauling it?”   
“Before you assume anything bad, we talked about football. I have an extraordinary sense for manly topics too. I was a decent citizen. I chatted.”  
Brendon waited for Dallon’s jaw to clench and come back with something about him being decent but it seemed like he didn’t want to go into details and he went on with more subtle warfare.  
“And how is it going with the job hunting? If so far you can turn your hand to anything.”  
“Decisions about the choice of career cause me stress so I don’t rush anything. You can drop me here!”  
The man didn’t give a damn about him and he pulled into the driveway in front of Green Gentleman.  
“There goes your tip.”  
“Can’t choose between the offers?”  
“Tons of them arrive.”  
“That’s what I heard. This is a town with many rumors.”  
“I could have bet on it.”  
Dallon parked near the house and stopped the engine. “The rumor is that not even Patrick Stump wanted to hire you in Quik Mart.”  
“Unfortunately I spread the rumor about her sister sleeping with half of the football team. He does not in the least care that it was true.”  
Dallon took a suspiciously vile look at him.  
“Don’t look at me like that I just wanted to! That’s not the same.” Brendon pointed it out with sassy objectivity. “Cast the first stone at me who didn’t.”  
“Any other low blows today?”  
“If you keep teasing me.”   
Brendon opened the door and started unpacking. Dallon evaded the front of his car and Brendon nearly dropped the pack of cola as he saw that Dallon was wearing tight sparkly trousers with a grey small flowery sweater under his suit. With his disheveled hair and with the sunglasses in it he looked too good.   
“Let me carry those bags! This is the least I can do for you.”  
Brendon was so surprised at his appearance that he got speechless. This is Mississippi for God’s sake. Man here, who doesn’t want to get entangled in rumors don’t dress like this. “I didn’t think closing the driveway would cause you this much inconvenience. Sadly I was wrong.”  
“Don’t worry.” Brendon answered, after he regained consciousness. “At least I don’t need to keep a personal trainer” he breathed out.  
“Is there something wrong? I hope so!”  
“Nothing. Nothing at all you just....look hot...I mean not...nevermind.” he gabbled.  
Dallon raised his eyebrows but before he could have said anything Bogart who seemed to be hiding on the veranda now came trotting across the yard. For Brendon’s biggest surprise Dallon was happy for him. The man freed one of his hands by shifting all the bags to the other and leaned down to scratch Bogart’s ear.  
“So you haven’t run away yet budy?”  
“Whoa, how cute!” Brendon impatiently couldn’t care less about Bogart who in return glared at him like he was waiting for him to get jealous. Dallon was smiling. Not mockingly, neither cynical nor viciously but genuinely and charmingly. Brendon couldn’t pay attention to the dog.   
“He heaved in sight a few days ago. Stray dog.”  
“Then he has fleas. If I were you I would call the flayer.” He finally looked at the dog deceitfully when Dallon got serious.   
“He doesn’t have fleas!” His ex teacher seemed more irritated than usual. “You know what would the flayer do to him!”  
“He would lock him in a cage and teach him how to behave!” Brendon glanced at Bogart indicating that he should know better where his place is at for being unfaithful. The dog almost in slow motion, staring Brendon in the eye, licked Dallon’s hand and rubbed against him.  
Although he’s believed to be able to spot a loser instead of snarling at him as he did in normal cases he started playing to his audience. He dropped his head letting his floppy ears to plop on the ground and by giving a little whimper he perfectly portrayed a pathetic whipped-puppy. As a warning Brendon pulled his finger in front of his throat then innocently began to pick his neck when Dallon strictly turned toward him.   
“This is remarkably heartless even from you” he said stiffly.   
“Well, this is a dog-eat-dog world.” Bogart trotted toward the veranda more than pleased with himself. His stomach was unusually big compared to his tiny figure.  
“You fed him? He looks fat.”  
“And if I did, what do you have to do with it?”  
"I'm just worried! You might create the appearance of generosity and you end up with friends." Brendon sighed.  
“I have friends. Flesh and blood friends you know.”  
"You're a very very lucky man" Brendon's voice couldn’t have been less colorful.  
“I'm just a grateful type-of-a-man.”  
“How much virtue there is in such a big body. I don’t really understand why you sink to the dust.”  
“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, they used to say.”  
“Is this a little teaser from your new book?” Brendon snapped sardonically, and Dallon ‘accidentally’ hit him in the shin with the dog food-bag.  
Brendon gave a killer glance at him as they reached the carriageway. When he pressed the door handle, Dallon picked up a quarrel again.  
“Why isn’t this door locked?”  
“It's Jacksontown. Doesn’t make sense.”  
“There are criminals here as well.”  
“Come on! The public safety is the best here.”  
“You have to lock the door from now.” Dallon's voice had peremptory overtone.  
Brendon rolled his eyes.  
"Okay, daddy! As if it was an obstacle for anyone. They just have to kick the door. I'm sorry I have to impart the bad news, but if somebody finds my dead body, you'll be the number one suspect. Moreover, I'll start to write some sort of daily diary posts, with hints in them like that I'm afraid of you and I think you want to kill me.”  
“It’s impossible to have a deeper meaningful conversation with you.”  
Dallon looked around in the living room with disgust, though Brendon had cleaned it from the floor to the ceiling.  
“Sorry Sir! What do you think about the Gun Laws?”  
"In my opinion, the libe…” Dallon started, but Brendon leaned over to the doorframe with fake-snorting. “Oh god, you are a dumbass.” Dallon shook his head resignedly.  
“Your aunt had never thrown anything out?” he sighed, after Brendon “woke up” with insolent grinning.  
“Not really. If you like something, feel free to quote a price.”   
“I will not restrain myself.” Dallon started his way toward the kitchen with dust leaking under his feet.  
Brendon put his jacket on a chair and followed him.  
"I bet you would open your wallet for Esteban's painting.”  
“I think the painting would exhaust even my financial framework.”  
Dallon put the shopping bags on the counter, his tall figure filled the little room.  
Brendon took out the dog food cans just to divert his attention.   
“You spoke with Brenda. You believe in the existence of the painting, right?”  
“Yes.” Dallon leaned over the old fridge and crossed his legs and started to comb his hair with his fingers. Brendon fiddled nervously with the Pedigree Biscrock bag. "I think it's very likely that your aunt destroyed it.”  
“No way. This was her most valuable asset. Why would she had done it?”  
“She didn’t share the picture with anyone in her life. Why would she had shared after her death? And why with his nephew, whom she considered to be a male-whore?” Brendon gritted his teeth.  
“Because we were family. Unlike his half-wit brother, she was aware of what that counts.”  
“How are you talking about your poor, late father? Bad boy!” Dallon shook his head with pretended disapproval and with a glowing grin on his face.  
“Next time, when you travel to Utah, say a prayer for my spiritual salvation. But don’t go in this pants and this sweater.”  
“You really are irreparable.” Dallon sighed almost resignedly, then narrowed his eyes to the dog food. “What the hell is this?”  
“I'm poor. It’s nutritious. Give it to me!” Brendon snatched the can out of his hand and tried not to fawn over to Dallon’s hip while he put the coke in the fridge.  
“Steady!” His ex teacher stood in his way forcing him to look up at him. “You came with the dog! He’s yours, isn’t he?” Dallon asked.   
“Ask him about it!” Brendon tried to get out of his way.  
“You told me to call the flayer!” Dallon steped in front of him again.   
Brendon was happy to hear the shock in his voice.  
“We had some disagreements, my wounds are still fresh. You know... in my heart.” His lips were draining dramatically. Dallon finally deigned to get out of the way and looked in Brendon’s chocolate brown eyes.  
“If you hate him so much, why did you bring him with you?”  
Brendon knelt down to put the cans there under the sink, and looked up at the other men. Then he realized it was a very stupid idea, even from himself. He stood up quickly.  
“I felt sorry for him. And he is cute, but he has personality disorder.”  
“You have personality disorder. He is a wonderful dog.”  
“It’s just flattery. I mean what Bogart does, not you. You are just an asshole.”   
Dallon started walking around in the kitchen absently, examining the glass-enclosed cabinets and old household appliances. The porcelain handle of the breadbox left in his hand. He studied it with a mysterious half smile. “It's a pity, you can’t find a job.”  
“You are changing the topics so quickly that it makes me dizzy. It’s not your business anyway, so...”  
Brendon's tight, black T-shirt slipped up from his waist as he put a bag of chips on the top shelf on his tiptoes. He knew that the other man had noticed that his underpants are flashing out because it took him a few seconds to pick up the thread of the conversation.  
“I almost felt sorry for you. You have a dog who doesn’t like you, no one hires you and you have nothing in your wallet.”  
“But my charm didn’t change!” Brendon started to fan his belly with his T-shirt as the summer heat would raging in the kitchen and Dallon started to feel the same immediately when he saw his perfect abs and his V-line.  
He put his shoulder against the wall and throwed the handle from one hand to the other. He looked into his eyes, though Brendon would have sworn that he had a small jaw-clench. Even if he just hoped.  
“I think I've already mentioned that maybe I have a job for you. Are you desperate enough already?”  
Brendon almost choked on his own saliva. “I thought you were joking.”  
“I can assure you I've never joked with anyone.”  
"Now that I think so, I could have known. You don’t have this kind of good sense of humor really. Is it included in my job description that you can push me against the wall?” Brendon crossed his arms and leaned to the counter.  
“Do you want to include it?” From the way how Dallon looked at him, Brendon admitted he was not the only one who knew how to play games like these. He didn’t expect this kind of answer, and especially didn’t expect that he was embarrassed by it for a half of a second.   
It took a few seconds to recover his composure.  
“I’m afraid, I might became estranged from men.” he said.  
Dallon snorted derisory.  
“Okay, come on! What's goin’ on in your mind?”  
Dallon looked at the bread box, and while Brendon waited in suspicious silence,he installed the handle back to its place. Then, with satisfaction of his result, he turned to Brendon with a sly glance.  
“I need a housekeeper. A maintenance, janitor, handyman. Call it what you want, but something like that.”  
“A housekeeper?” Brendon's black eyes narrowed.  
“The housekeeper is the one who heads the household. The janitor does the same but with more stuff around the house.”  
"That was ‘Our Cultural Five Minutes’ our kind attendee. I know what it means, scroll. Why do you offer me this job?”  
“Because I can’t resist the seduction. Green Gentleman's cherished little prince was forced to take care of the garden, wash the dishes and kneel down to serve the man he was trying to ruin. Just like a fairy tale. Adorable, isn’t it?” Dallon said with a chattering tone than raised his eyebrows with a dreamy sigh.  
“Yeah. Okay. Okay. Alright. "Brendon nodded objectively, then as he was fired from a missile, he started opening the drawers.

“What are you searching for? Your self-esteem?” Dallon peeked over his shoulder, flapping Brendon's nose with his manly-refined scent.  
"Brenda’s butcher knife to slash you in pieces!" Brendon opened the oven door too in undue hurry, just in case.  
Dallon walked out of the “slash-reach” to the living room.  
“Look at the practical side of the object! Green Gentleman's maintenance is a full-time job. Six days a week, from seven o’clock at the morning till after dinner. I hope I don’t need to say that as much as I can, I will make the whole thing even harder for you.”  
“I can find the knife within minutes!!” Brendon exclaimed, then he said “ouch” when he closed his finger into one of the drawers. Dallon smiled.  
“You pick up the phone calls, take care of the shopping. You do the mowing, the housecleaning. Although, I suppose it is beyond your ability, but you have to cook too. You can order once a week when you cut the grass. You know, the lawn is huge. You have to sort the bills and the letters. I want a perfect household that I don’t have to do anything with. Do you think you could handle it?”  
Dallon didn’t make a lot of effort to conceal his feelings, and Brendon said to himself, that his situation wasn’t that bad yet. But it was, Pete said it too. He began to chew his lips with discomfort.  
However, Dallon named a wage that thrilled him and he ran into the living room.  
“I accept! You mean daily, right?”  
Even from the other half of the room, Dallon saw the sanguine shine of Brendon’s eyes and he knew he should be ashamed. Of course he wasn’t. He never felt better since Brendon arrived.  
“Don’t be foolish! Weekly.”  
Brendon looked like as he choked on something, and Dallon didn’t even try to hide his happy grin.  
The idea to offer him a job was pulled out of his brain at the station building. He had time to think, but he wasn’t sure about it until he saw Brendon sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, in worn out jeans and with a mobile phone on his ears like a burned out rock star. There was something in the way he crunched his neck and his vein tightened. There was something in the way he moved. Something in the way he run his fingers through his own hair. Something, that assured Dallon he had to accomplish his plan.  
He did not intend to ruin him, but he wanted to see the sincere tears of regret in his eyes.   
As much as he was forgiving towards him, Brendon deserved more ‘reward’ than he received yet. Chaining the driveway was just nothing, but this job will do its impact.  
Brendon was still dizzy from the offensive payment Dallon had recommended to him.  
“How can you be so niggardly?”  
Dallon looked down on him with a cruel smile.  
“Don’t forget that you will eat my food and certainly you will use my phone. Then there are the various pilferies that people have to count on with an employee.”  
Brendon's eyes glistened with anger and it was lighting like an air-defense gun.  
"Just to prove I'm not unfair, I take the chain off from the driveway.” Dallon continued, then suddenly came up with an idea. “And of course, you will get a uniform.”  
“Uniform?” asked Brendon with hysterical fake laughing.  
Oh yes! Dallon would be too distracted if Brendon was walking around in tight trousers and with his muscles in highlight. Even his little show while he unpacked the food demanded Dallon’s great self-restraint: flashing boxer, the dimples on his waist, the perfectly drawn V-line.   
It’s so hard to take his eyes off of them.  
“You will be a handyman. Of course you need uniform.”  
“In the twenty-first century? Wake up Shakespeare!”  
“We’ll see and discuss the details on your first workday.”  
Brendon tried to find something catchy as an answer in his mind, but it seemed like he slowly shot all his daily weapons. In his mind, Madeline glanced at him gently.  
“All right, you bastard. Let it be!” Brendon sighed and looked into the cold-blue eyes. “But you will take care of the dogfood.”  
“With pleasure. See you tomorrow.” Dallon said but he wasn’t perfectly satisfied.   
He wanted to be completely sure that Brendon understood the state of things. He searched in his mind until he found the last nail he could drive into his coffin. Just because of the small teasing game he played at the kitchen.  
“Come at the back door. It’s the staff only.” Then he left the house with a killer smile on his face.


End file.
